“Yesterday Miró turned Pamplona into a battleground.” Martinez slammed a fist down on his desk. “He murdered two prison guards and smuggled two of his terrorists out of prison. Many innocent people were killed by the bulls he let loose.”
For a moment no one said anything.
When the prime minister had taken office, he had declared smugly, “My first act will be to put a stop to these separatist groups. Madrid is the great unifier. It transforms Andalusians, Basques, Catalans, and Galicians into Spaniards.”
He had been unduly optimistic. The fiercely independent Basques had other ideas, and the wave of bombings, bank robberies, and demonstrations by terrorists of ETA, Euzkadita Azkatasuna, had continued unabated.
The man at Martinez’s right said quietly, “I’ll find him.”
The speaker was Colonel Ramón Acoca, head of the GOE, the Grupo de Operaciones Especiales, formed to pursue Basque terrorists. Acoca was in his middle sixties, a giant with a scarred face and cold, obsidian eyes. He had been a young officer under Francisco Franco during the Civil War, and he was still fanatically devoted to Franco’s philosophy: “We are responsible only to God and to history.”
Acoca was a brilliant officer, and he had been one of Franco’s most trusted aides. The colonel missed the iron-fisted discipline, the swift punishment of those who questioned or disobeyed the law. He had experienced the turmoil of the Civil War, with its Nationalist alliance of Monarchists, rebel generals, landowners, Church hierarchy, and fascist Falangists on one side, and the Republican government forces, including Socialists, Communists, liberals, and Basque and Catalan separatists, on the other. It had been a terrible time of destruction and killing, a madness that had pulled in men and war materiel from a dozen countries and left a horrifying death toll. And now the Basques were fighting and killing again.
Colonel Acoca headed an efficient, ruthless cadre of antiterrorists. His men worked underground, wore disguises, and were neither publicized nor photographed for fear of retaliation.
If anyone can stop Jaime Miró, Colonel Acoca can, the prime minister thought. But there was a catch: Who’s going to be the one to stop Colonel Acoca?
Putting the colonel in charge had not been the prime minister’s idea. He had received a phone call in the middle of the night on his private line. He had recognized the voice immediately.
“We are greatly disturbed by the activities of Jaime Miró and his terrorists. We suggest that you put Colonel Ramon Acoca in charge of the GOE. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir. It will be taken care of immediately.”
The line went dead.
The voice belonged to a member of the OPUS MUNDO. The organization was a secret cabal that included bankers, lawyers, heads of powerful corporations, and government ministers. It was rumored to have enormous funds at its disposal, but where the money came from and how it was used and manipulated was a mystery. It was not considered healthy to ask too many questions about it.
The prime minister had placed Colonel Acoca in charge, as he had been instructed, but the giant had turned out to be an uncontrollable fanatic. His GOE had created a reign of terror. The prime minister thought of the Basque rebels Acoca’s men had caught near Pamplona. They had been convicted and sentenced to hang. It was Colonel Acoca who had insisted that they be executed by the barbaric garrote, the iron collar fitted with a spike that gradually tightened, eventually cracking the vertebrae and severing the victim’s spinal cord.
Jaime Miró had become an obsession with Colonel Acoca.
“I want his head,” Acoca said. “Cut off his head and the Basque movement dies.”
An exaggeration, the prime minister thought, although he had to admit that there was a core of truth in it. Jaime Miró was a charismatic leader, fanatical about his cause, and therefore dangerous.
But in his own way, the prime minister thought, Colonel Acoca is just as dangerous.
Primo Casado, the director general of security, was speaking. “Your Excellency, no one could have foreseen what happened in Pamplona. Jaime Miró is—”
“I know what he is,” the prime minister snapped. “I want to know where he is.” He turned to Colonel Acoca.