The Sands of Time. Sidney Sheldon

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       Chapter Two

      Madrid

      Prime Minister Leopoldo Martinez was in a rage. He was a small, bespectacled man, and his whole body shook as he talked. ‘Jaime Miró must be stopped,’ he cried. His voice was high and shrill. ‘Do you understand me?’ He glared at the half dozen men gathered in the room. ‘We’re looking for one terrorist, and the whole army and police force are unable to find him.’

      The meeting was taking place at Moncloa Palace, where the Prime Minister lived and worked, five kilometres from the centre of Madrid, on the Carretera de Galicia, a highway with no identifying signs. The building itself was green brick, with wrought iron balconies, green window shades, and guard towers at each corner.

      It was a hot, dry day, and through the windows, as far as the eye could see, columns of heat waves rose like battalions of ghostly soldiers.

      ‘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 the ETA organization, Euzkadi ta 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 a giant, in his middle sixties, 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 gone through the turmoil of the Civil War, with its Nationalist alliance of Monarchists, rebel generals, landowners, church hierarchy and the 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 in a madness that pulled in men and war matériel 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 anti-terrorists. 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 recognized the voice immediately.

      ‘We are greatly disturbed by the activities of Jaime Miró and his terrorists. We suggest that you put Colonel Ramón 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 rumoured to have enormous funds at its disposal, but where the money came from or how it was used or 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 to, 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 vil, the iron collar fitted with a spike which gradually tightened, eventually cracked the vertebra and severed the victim’s СКАЧАТЬ