GIBRALTAR


Chapter 9



McKenna invited Cisco to the meeting with Ibarretxe, but politicians bored him and he declined. Since there was nothing else going on that afternoon that Cisco deemed worthy of his attention, he did his paperwork and took the rest of the day off. They arranged to meet at noon the next day at The Wicked Wolf, a bar and restaurant on First Avenue, and McKenna would relay over lunch the information gained from Ibarretxe.
     The Spanish Embassy was located at East 48th Street and First Avenue, close to the U.N., and McKenna arrived right on time at 4:00 \plain\fs20 P.M.\plain One of Ibarretxe's aides was waiting for him in the lobby, and she escorted him past two security checkpoints to Ibarretxe's office. Ibarretxe was waiting at the door to his office. He greeted McKenna, brought him in, and dismissed the aide.
     Ibarretxe had a large office, appointed with enough luxury in the way of furniture and paintings to give McKenna an indication that being Spain's deputy ambassador to the United Nations was a very big job. Ibarretxe had taken the time to shave and change his clothes, and he was wearing a formal pinstripe suit. Since the embassy was on a Sunday schedule, and McKenna had seen nobody else there except for the aide and the four security people, he assumed that Ibarretxe had taken the trouble to change solely for their meeting.
     Ibarretxe sat at his desk, and McKenna sat in a comfortable leather chair facing him. "Have they issued any demands, yet?" McKenna asked.
     "A couple of hours ago, by fax to El Pa\'eds. Madrid newspaper. No return number on the top of the fax, so it was untraceable."
     "What are they demanding?"
     "A little less than was expected. All ETA prisoners are to be transferred to a prison in the Basque Country. All sentences are to be commuted to five years. Those that have already served five years are to be freed."
     "No mention of negotiations?"
     "None."
     "Any timetable or threats to execute the hostages?"
     "None, but there is something we expected. The communiqué explicitly stated that under no circumstances would La Tesora be harmed."
     "La Tesora?"
     "Common nickname for Carmen. The Treasure."
     "So they're just as smart as you thought they were," McKenna observed.
     "Hard to say. They might just be reacting to events, because there certainly have been some unusual events happening since our people learned they took La Tesora."
     "Your people? Do you mean the Basques or the Spanish?"
     "The Basques. Euskal Herritarrok is the political arm of the ETA, and it has offices in all the major Basque cities. Mobs formed outside their office in San Sebastian this afternoon. Orderly demonstration at first, with everyone chanting `Return the Treasure,' but the demonstration got out of hand and turned into a mob. They ransacked the building, and then burned it. Two hours later, the same thing happened at the Euskal Herritarrok offices in Bilbao."
     "Euskal Herritarrok functions as a political party?"
     "Yes. Before today, it was the second most powerful party in the Basque Country. The Basque Nationalist Party is fairly moderate and controls all three provincial governments in the Basque Country, but the mayor of Bilbao is associated with Euskal Herritarrok."
     "What were the police doing while the mob was ransacking and burning?"
     "They watched while the mob cheered, and so did the firefighters. They kept a stream of water on the buildings next to the Euskal Herritarrok offices, but they let Euskal Herritarrok's offices burn to the ground."
     "I hope you don't think this question is out of line, but is there any chance this whole thing was orchestrated by the Madrid government?"
     "In the Basque Country? Never. There aren't enough Spaniards living in the Basque Country to form mobs of that size, and the mob was chanting in Basque. Less than one percent of Spaniards speak the language."
     "What was the mayor of Bilbao doing while all this was going on?"
     "The sensible thing. He stood with the cops and watched the building burn to the ground. Then he made a speech denouncing the kidnapping of La Tesora and demanding her immediate return. Wild applause, so he went even further. Announced he was quitting Euskal Herritarrok and joining the Basque Nationalist Party."
     "So I guess Euskal Herritarrok is finished."
     "I think the ETA is finished. Without support in the Basque Country, they can't operate."
     "Then why did they take her?"
     "Madrid thinks it's their last hurrah, and the ETA planned it that way," Ibarretxe said. "The government will be under intense pressure to negotiate Carmen's return, and the ETA gets what it wants–the eventual release of their people before the organization fades out of existence."
     "And then peace?"
     "Presumably. The prisoners are the ETA's last achievable reason to exist."
     The idea made McKenna smile. "Carmen would like that–maybe like it so much that she wouldn't mind being kidnapped to get it."
     "Maybe, but I'm sure all the murders the ETA did to get their hostages will deeply trouble her. Two here, two in Spain, and five in France."
     "A lot of bodies," McKenna said, "But maybe the last casualties of the war."
     "If the government negotiates," Ibarretxe added.
     "Any chance they won't?"
     "That depends on the police in France, Spain, and here. If it's possible to release the hostages, why negotiate?"
     Good point, McKenna thought. With the ETA getting more unpopular every minute, the Spanish government will be in no hurry to negotiate–especially if there was a chance the hostages could be freed. Let's see how good we're doing here, he decided, and he passed Ibarretxe the head shot of the woman.
     McKenna had expected Ibarretxe to immediately recognize her, but he just studied the photo without comment, then passed it back. "Very pretty. Where does she fit into this?"
     "She's the leader of the team that kidnapped your ambassador. You don't recognize her?"
     "Sorry, no. Should I be able to?"
     "I guess I was expecting you could. I'd figured that the leader of this group would be a famous ETA fugitive."
     "Maybe she is now, but I'm not aware of it. I haven't been home in a year, so I'm really not up to date on who's been added to the list of wanted ETA fugitives."
     "So there's someone in the Guardia Civil who could identify her from this picture."
     "Colonel Segovia will do it, if anyone can. He'll be here tomorrow morning."
     "Good. Can you give me the details of the other kidnappings now?"
     "Suppose I show you? I have all the police reports on the cases. They're in Spanish and French, of course, but I'd be happy to translate the French for you."
     "I speak French," McKenna said.
     Ibarretxe showed no surprise, and McKenna figured that, like most Europeans, Ibarretxe expected that an educated person would naturally be proficient in a number of languages. "Have you seen anything about it on TV, yet?" he asked.
     "Haven't had a chance."
     "No matter. CNN Europe ran a special report on the kidnappings about an hour ago. They gave about as much information on it as you'll find in these reports," Ibarretxe said. He took a thick stack of reports from his desk drawer and passed them to McKenna.
     "The investigations aren't going well?" McKenna asked.
     "Unless they're hiding something else they're doing, the Guardia Civil doesn't seem to be making much progress, and the French don't seem to be doing much better."
     McKenna had long since become accustomed to reading the reports prepared by other police agencies, and over the years he had found that they all followed the same general format. On top were the reports from the Paris police. The kidnapping there had begun at 4:15 \plain\fs20 A.M\plain . when two armed men wearing ski masks hijacked a newspaper delivery truck and kidnapped the driver in the Arrondisement 4 area of central Paris. The driver was tied, blindfolded, and gagged in the back of the truck, but he believed they stopped somewhere near the Boulevard Ste. Michelle to pick up another two or three men.
     The police were unable to uncover any witnesses to the initial stage of the assault on the ambassador's building, but they were able to surmise what had happened. At about 4:30 \plain\fs20 A.M\plain ., the newspaper delivery truck pulled up in front of the building and one of the terrorists shot and killed the gendarme standing guard in front. It was assumed that the shooter used the ruse of delivering papers to the building to get close to the gendarme, because a tied stack of newspapers was found next to his body.
     The concierge was on the phone with his wife when the gunmen entered, and it was assumed that possibly the gunmen feared he was warning the ambassador or calling the police. He was shot dead, two shots to the head. His wife heard the shots through the phone, and called the police.
     A woman living on the third floor of an apartment building across the street also called the police to report that she had heard shots, there was a gendarme lying on the sidewalk in front of the ambassador's building, and he appeared to be dead. Many police units were dispatched to the scene, but by that time the killers were outside the ambassador's apartment. They attached Goma Two plastic explosive charges to the door, and blew it in.
     The ambassador's bodyguard, a sergeant in the Guardia Civil, must have heard the shots downstairs, because he was up and ready for company. He had taken cover behind a couch in the living room, and he had his pistol in his hand. However, he wasn't ready when the door blew in. The door hit the couch, knocking the sergeant over. He managed to get one shot off, and he apparently hit one of the terrorists before he was killed by a burst of fire from an automatic weapon. There was a pool of blood found near the front door, and one ejected shell from the sergeant's pistol was found near his body. No slug was found, so the police assumed that it was still lodged somewhere in the body of one of the terrorists.
     The ambassador and his wife had been awakened by the noise of the explosion and the gunfire and, according to the wife, they immediately knew it was the ETA. Four men wearing ski masks entered the bedroom, three armed with automatic weapons, and one with a pistol. They bound the ambassador's wrists with duct tape, but didn't harm his wife. They led him downstairs, and the wife called the police to inform them that the ambassador had been kidnapped. This information was relayed to the responding units.
     The first two-man unit arrived at the intersection just north of the ambassador's building at 4:39, and the car was hit by a rocket fired from an unknown location. Both gendarmes were killed. The second unit arrived from the opposite direction one minute later, just as the ambassador was being led from the building by four men. At the other end of the block, they saw the burning wreckage of the first unit.
     The driver stopped the car just as the back door of the newspaper delivery truck was opened. A man inside unleashed a long burst of automatic fire. The two gendarmes ducked under the dashboard, and weren't injured, but their car's engine had been disabled by the gunfire.
     From somewhere behind them–the gendarmes couldn't identify the source–a man using a loudspeaker ordered them in Spanish-accented French to remain in the car, or they would be killed. The gendarmes realized that they were outnumbered and heavily outgunned, so they complied. They tried to use their radio to warn other units of the danger. They found that their frequency was being jammed and they couldn't transmit.
     A third police unit arrived from the same direction as the first unit, just as the newspaper delivery truck was pulling away from the curb. They stopped at the intersection near the wreckage of the first unit, got out, and took cover behind their car. Then they saw two men on the side street to their right, around the corner from the ambassador's building. One was armed with an automatic weapon of some sort, and the other had a rocket launcher pointed in their direction. He fired the rocket, but missed their car, and the rocket hit a building behind the gendarmes. As the newspaper delivery truck approached them, a man leaned out the passenger's side and fired a burst of automatic fire into the front of the police car, and that engine was also disabled.
     As the truck passed them, it made a left at the intersection, and the gendarmes fired a total of eleven rounds at the man standing in the passenger's side of the truck. They hit him four times, and he fell from the truck. The truck continued down the block, stopped to pick up the man with the rocket launcher while the other one sprayed bullets at the gendarmes. The gendarmes remained behind their car, and weren't hit. The shooter also got into the truck, and it took off.
     At 4:50 \plain\fs20 A.M\plain . the abandoned truck was found by another unit in an alley about a kilometer from the ambassador's building. The newspaper delivery driver was found in the back, blindfolded, gagged, bound hand and foot, but otherwise unharmed. The area was canvassed, but no witnesses were found. The ETA had made a clean getaway.
     The next fifteen reports certified that the French police had done as much work on their case as the NYPD had done on the New York kidnapping, but they didn't have much to show for their efforts. As he read the reports documenting all the procedural steps taken in their investigation, McKenna was able to guess the reasons for the lack of progress. Unlike the U.S., France had experienced problems with the ETA in the past, so the administration had wisely stationed a gendarme outside the Spanish ambassador's building. That precaution had not been enough to prevent the determined assault. As for the lack of witnesses, Paris is a city of small buildings when compared with Manhattan; although the assault had occurred in the heart of town, there were no doormen to witness it. It is also a city that is not as heavily policed as New York, so there were far fewer units available to respond on an early Sunday morning than there would have been in New York.
     As far as McKenna could tell from the reports, the Paris police had been plagued by bad luck and thwarted by the excellent, well-executed ETA plan; their ETA prisoner had died in the hospital without regaining consciousness. His fingerprints had been checked in France and submitted to the Guardia Civil, but neither country had a record on him; he remained unidentified. Since the ETA killers had worn ski masks throughout the assault, the few witnesses the police had been able to develop hadn't helped them at all. The only thing the Paris police had been able to accomplish had been to ascertain what had happened, and clean up the debris. They had rounded up all the usual suspects–in this case, known or suspected Iparretarrak members or sympathizers, and then they grilled them. If the police obtained any results from these interrogations, it wasn't listed in the reports; all persons detained had been subsequently released.
     However, the reports gave McKenna cause for concern, and a few things to think about. The ballistics and lab reports indicated that the ETA had used Eastern-block weapons: AK-47 assault rifles, Makarov 9-mm. automatic pistols, RPG-7 rocket launchers–all older weapons, but still highly effective. McKenna imagined the carnage that would have followed in New York if the ambassador's kidnapping had not gone so smoothly for the ETA. He had been right about that, and he had been right about something else; the lack of a police record on the dead terrorist indicated that the ETA was using recently- recruited cadre on the most important missions they had undertaken to date.
     The factor that disturbed McKenna most in the French police reports was that the ETA had jammed their radio frequency. That meant they had to be monitoring the police radio, and it was reasonable to assume they were doing the same thing in New York. McKenna realized that when the time came to close in on them Upstate, steps would have to be taken to prevent them from becoming more informed than they should be.
     The only good news McKenna could infer from the reports was that, during the operation, the ETA had only killed when they felt they had to in order to accomplish their mission. They hadn't harmed the ambassador's wife or the newspaper delivery truck driver, and they had permitted two of the responding gendarmes to live when they could have just as easily killed them.
     McKenna placed the French reports on Ibarretxe's desk, and went on to the Spanish reports.
     The first indication the Guardia Civil had that something had gone awry in the foothills above Jaca was when the desk sergeant had been unable to raise on the radio his unit that had been escorting Carmen's car to Pamplona. Their last transmission had been that they had met Carmen and her bodyguard, and all were proceeding to Pamplona via Jaca. The desk sergeant had then tried the phone number for Carmen's car, and it wasn't answered. He dispatched a unit to investigate their last known location, kilometer marker 45 on the road leading to Carmen's estate and the French frontier.
     Henri Picard was found at the scene of the ambush, along with Officers Brizuela and Vargas of the Guardia Civil, and Sergeant Rafael Gujas of the San Sebastian Police. Brizuela was alive, but severely injured, having sustained a fractured skull and a shattered shoulder when he had been thrown into the woods by the explosion that had destroyed his car. Vargas and Gujas were both dead. Vargas had died as a result of massive injuries sustained when he was thrown off the road and down a cliff after the Soviet-era RPG-7 rocket had hit his car, and it took two hours to recover his body.
     Gujas's body was behind the wheel of his BMW, and he had been killed by a single 9-mm. shot to the heart from a Makarov pistol. According to the pathologist's report, he had been murdered at about 2:00 \plain\fs20 A.M\plain ., four and a half hours before the ambush. Blood matching his found on the front passenger's seat and console of his car indicated that he had been shot as he sat behind the wheel of his car.
     Picard made a statement to the initial responding officers at the scene. According to him, he had immediately suspected an ambush when he saw the BMW overturned and blocking the road; there were no skid marks before the car had hit the wall, and that told him that the man behind the wheel was already dead before the impact. Picard thought that Gujas's body had been secured in the front seat by the seat belt, and the BMW had then been pushed down the steeply-sloped roadway leading to the wall.
     Going further, Picard stated that it was not Gujas who had passed him in the car earlier. Although they were both wearing red shirts, and even bore a facial resemblance, the driver at that time had a mustache and Gujas did not.
     Picard proved to be an excellent witness concerning other aspects of the ambush as well. He stated that ten men had taken part, all of them wearing ski masks; seven were armed with AK-47s, two were armed with RPG-7 rocket launchers, and the leader–a short, stout man with a husky voice–was armed only with a Makarov pistol.
     After Picard had been asked at gunpoint to exit Carmen's Mercedes, the leader descended from the woods and stopped with his pistol in his hand over the prone and unconscious Brizuela. He then bent down to administer the customary coup de gr\'e2ce used by the ETA when dealing with Guardia Civil prisoners–a bullet in the brain.
     Picard, although covered by many guns, yelled for the leader to stop and he began walking toward him. Amazingly, Picard was permitted to proceed, and the leader hesitated.
     That was when Carmen had sprung into action. She bolted from the back seat of her car, and ran past Picard to Brizuela. Although many of the ETA fighters could have stopped her, none dared to do so. Carmen threw herself on top of Brizuela and begged the leader for his life. While the leader considered her entreaties, Carmen went even further. If Brizuela were allowed to live, she would cooperate fully with her captors, offer them no resistance, and she promised she would never identify them to anyone.
     Those promises saved Brizuela's life. The leader put his pistol in his belt, then ordered two of his men to go for the vans. The men ran down the road, and returned minutes later with two delivery vans from a San Sebastian package service. The drivers did a U-turn on the narrow road, and parked the vans in front of the overturned BMW while Picard noted the address of the company emblazoned on the doors, as well as the plate numbers. Then Carmen was asked by the leader to get into the back of one of the vans, and she did so. Apparently, her promises were believed, because she was neither blindfolded nor restrained in any way.
     Carmen's Mercedes was then disabled by two of the ETA fighters while Picard watched. They cracked the battery, pulled the ignition coil wire, and flattened all the tires. Before the ambush team left in the two vans with Carmen, headed downhill toward Jaca, they took Picard's pistol, his car keys, and the receiver from the car phone. He was left standing in the roadway, unharmed.
     At 8:45 \plain\fs20 A.M\plain ., about two hours after Carmen was taken, the two delivery vans used by her kidnappers were found abandoned on a back road ten kilometers north of Pamplona. The manager of the package delivery service was contacted in San Sebastian, and he stated that the last time he had seen the vans was at the close of the business day on Friday, and he was unaware they had been stolen.
     As for Sergeant Gujas, his movements the night before were easily traced, up to a point. He had finished working a 4:00 \plain\fs20 P.M\plain . to midnight tour on Saturday night, and had then visited one of his usual haunts, a San Sebastian bar in the old part of town. According to the bartender, an attractive young blonde he had never seen before engaged Gujas in conversation at the bar. Gujas didn't know the woman, because he had asked the bartender who she was. Then Gujas had bought a plate of tapas and a bottle of wine, and he and the unknown blonde sat at a rear table for an hour, eating, drinking, and apparently enjoying themselves immensely.
     The last time Gujas had been seen alive was when he left the bar in the company of the blonde at about 1:45 \plain\fs20 A.M\plain . Gujas had been single, and had a reputation as a ladies' man, so the bartender had assumed that Gujas had gotten lucky again.
     That was as far as the Guardia Civil had gotten in their investigation, except for one point. Picard's description of the leader of the ambush team caused the investigators to believe that he was Raoul Marey, a fugitive French Basque who was thought to be part of the ETA leadership. It had also been thought that Marey was hiding out in the French Basque Country, but that presumption had been altered by the kidnapping that had made him the most wanted man in Spain. The government had authorized a reward of fifty million pesetas for information leading to his arrest, and that offer, along with Marey's picture, was being broadcast on the government-owned TV stations hourly.
     The last couple of reports in the packet concerned Henri Picard, and they aroused McKenna's curiosity.
     After Picard had been interviewed by investigators at the scene of the ambush, he was asked to accompany them to the Guardia Civil barracks in Jaca to sign his typed statement. He had refused, telling the investigators he would visit the barracks that afternoon to be formally interviewed. He had then been driven back to Carmen's estate, and that was his last contact with the police. Picard had disappeared.
     Other members of Carmen's household staff had then been interviewed, and they reported that, after returning from the ambush, Picard had made a few phone calls, and then packed a few suitcases. He was gone less than an hour after arriving, driving his old Renault.
     The investigators checked with officials at the frontier, and were told that Picard had crossed into France at 11:15 \plain\fs20 A.M\plain . Although he was not suspected of any complicity in Carmen's kidnapping, the Guardia Civil had asked the assistance of the French police in locating him.
     The report on the request for French assistance in locating Picard contained a few additional requests that McKenna found highly unusual. If located, Picard was not to be detained, nor were his movements to be restricted in any way. The Guardia Civil went on to request that a full covert surveillance be placed upon Picard, but if it appeared he became aware of the surveillance, it was to be immediately discontinued.
     McKenna knew Picard, and couldn't imagine the reasons behind the strange requests. As far as he knew, Picard was a loyal bodyguard, friend, and confidant to Carmen, and he had been for many years. Picard seemed to be devoted to her, she trusted him implicitly, and Carmen was not a fool when it came to assessing people, their characters, and their motives. Therefore, Picard could be trusted, and McKenna thought the Guardia Civil's investigators should know that.
     McKenna put the Guardia Civil reports on top of the French police's reports on Ibarretxe's desk, then gave him an inquiring look.
     "Not satisfied?" Ibarretxe asked.
     "Somewhat satisfied. Everything that should be done has been done, even if the results aren't encouraging," McKenna replied. "However, I must admit the last of the Guardia Civil's reports has left me very curious."
     "Monsieur Picard?"
     "Uh-huh. The Guardia Civil is very interested in knowing what he's doing, but it seems they're also very anxious not to step on his toes."
     "Do you know why?"
     "No."
     "I believe you've met Monsieur Picard, haven't you?"
     "Yes, once."
     "At Carmen's house?"
     "Yes."
     "And what was your impression of him?"
     "At the time, he was acting as her butler–and her bodyguard, I guess. He's an impressive guy–military bearing, intuitive, totally devoted to Carmen, and the best butler I've ever seen."
     "Her butler, you say?" Ibarretxe commented, chuckling. "Care to add to that?"
     "Alright. The devotion angle is a two-way street. He's devoted to her, but it appeared to me that she's just as devoted to him. She leans on him, and he protects her."
     "Very perceptive, Detective McKenna, because that is how Monsieur Picard is known in Spain. El Protector, the person who keeps La Tesora safe."
     "El Protector? If I were a bodyguard, I don't think I'd mind carrying that title around," McKenna observed.
     "Me, neither, but Monsieur Picard is much more than that. I guess you're not aware that he's also one of the most powerful men in Spain?"
     "No, I'm not. How'd that happen?"
     "You, in part," Ibarretxe said. "After you killed Hector, Carmen went to pieces. Another tragedy in a tragic life, and she's always been considered fragile. So she shut herself away, but she realized she still had many business responsibilities that had to be fulfilled. Carmen is on the board of directors of most of the major Spanish corporations, and it was Monsieur Picard who fulfilled those responsibilities for her. He possesses her complete power of attorney."
     "He runs her businesses?"
     "In a way, probably better than she ever could herself. You see, Carmen has always had this disturbing proclivity to give away all her money. After Hector died, she was going to do just that. Fortunately, Monsieur Picard is a gifted visionary and he convinced her there was a better way to be generous. If she gave all her money away, some people would benefit, of course, but then she would have no more to give and it would be over. He convinced her that the way to be truly generous was to keep making more money and keep on giving."
     "And that happened?"
     "On a wide scale. All the workers and managers in her businesses were given raises, and nobody is ever fired. Some managers, of necessity, must be demoted from time to time, but they still retain their salaries. The effect was electric. Productivity and profits went way up, sick time and other absences went way down, and workers soon began sewing patches on their uniforms–Propriedad de la Tesora– Property of the Treasure, and they wear them proudly. Now Carmen gives away money to every worthy cause she can find, Picard keeps acquiring more businesses–just a rumor that he's looking at a new business will cause its stock to shoot up–and backwater Spain is on its way to becoming one of the most prosperous countries in Europe."
     "Where did Picard gain the expertise to pull all that off?" McKenna asked.
     "To tell you that, I would have to tell you something about we Basques," Ibarretxe said, and pride was evident in his voice. "Would you permit me?"
     "Please."
     "Squeezed between Spain and France on both sides of the frontier, for centuries we have been on the losing side in every war and revolution in either country. We were oppressed, and consequently we have learned to live by our wits to survive. Along the way, we have come to regard four qualities as being highly valuable in a man–loyalty, courage, generosity, and a quality that translates roughly as craftiness."
     "I take it Picard possesses all those qualities?" McKenna ventured.
     "In great abundance. In the French Basque Country, he is regarded as a tarnished hero, and in the Spanish Basque country he is thought of as a mysterious enigma."
     "Why a tarnished hero?"
     "Because he distinguished himself in the Resistance during the Nazi occupation. Then served in the Foreign Legion during the French-Indochina War. Awarded both the Croix de Guerre and the Legion de Merité–but later he was arrested in Spain for bank robbery."
     "Did he go to jail?"
     "For a few years, but he won his case on appeal when a few of the witnesses against him recanted."
     "Was he guilty?"
     "In the view of most, undoubtedly."
     "I see," McKenna said. "Tell me, how did he wind up in the Foreign Legion? He's French, and I thought only foreigners were permitted to enlist."
     "True. Only foreigners may enlist, but most of the officers are French. Monsieur Picard got out as a captain."
     "And why is he regarded as a mysterious enigma in Spain?"
     "Because so little is generally known about him since he left prison in nineteen sixty, and here he is suddenly running some of the largest corporations in the country."
     "Hasn't your press investigated him?"
     "Probably. It's rumored that El Correo–that's the principal San Sebastian newspaper–did an investigation on him a few years ago, and was set to run a series of articles. According to the rumor, Carmen intervened–called the editor, and told him that she feared that the articles would be an invasion of her personal privacy."
     "And that did it?" McKenna asked. "She killed the articles with one phone call?"
     "A request from La Tesora, when she makes so few?" Ibarretxe said, apparently amused by the question. "Of course the editor complied. The articles never ran."
     "Fine. So not much is generally known about him. However, judging from some of the unusual requests to the French police in these reports," McKenna said, placing his hand on the stack on Ibarretxe's desk, "the Guardia Civil knows quite a bit about him. I imagine there's quite an extensive Picard-dossier hidden somewhere."
     "I'm sure."
     "Well?"
     "Please understand that I only received those reports a few hours ago. After I read them, my curiosity was also aroused, so I called Madrid and asked for the dossier, if it existed," Ibarretxe explained, and he appeared to be embarrassed as he did so.
     "And? What did they tell you?"
     "Basically, to mind my own business for now. If the need arises, I'll be sent the dossier."
     "That was a very abrupt reply, wouldn't you say?"
     "Never received one quite like it, and I'm not new to this business," Ibarretxe said, and then changed the subject. "How have you been doing on the case here?"
     "Fortunately for us, I'd say better than your police and the French police. Unfortunately, I didn't know how the cooperation protocol was to work. They've sent us all their reports on their investigations, and I didn't bring any of ours with me to send to them."
     "But you will?"
     "I'll have to check with Mr. Bara first, but I don't foresee a problem. I'm sure I'll be dropping off all our reports sometime tonight."
     "That's perfectly acceptable. In the meantime, why don't you tell me what's been done?"
     It didn't take long for McKenna to relay to Ibarretxe all the points in the investigation he didn't already know. However, McKenna had noticed that the French and Spanish police hadn't forwarded any reports on their future plans in their investigations, and he decided to follow suit until he talked the matter over with Bara. Ibarretxe received all the facts, but not the conclusions drawn from them. McKenna didn't mention that the Joint Terrorist Task Force would soon be moving Upstate, hopefully to bring the American end of the affair to a successful conclusion.
     If Ibarretxe deduced that McKenna knew more than he was telling, he didn't show it by asking any leading questions. An experienced man skilled in the ways of diplomacy, McKenna decided.

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