Though it packed no rocket, the RQ-4 Hawk had all the details Dexter needed. It could fly at 65,000 feet, far out of sight or sound of what it was watching. Through sun, rain, cloud or night, it could survey forty thousand square miles a day and, sipping its fuel, could stay up there for thirty-five hours. Unlike the other two, it could cruise at 340 knots, far faster than its targets.

By the end of May, two of these marvels had been installed and were dedicated to Project Cobra. One was set up to operate out of the Colombian coastal base of Malambo, northeast of Cartagena.

The other was on the island of Fernando de Noronha, off the northeastern coast of Brazil. Each unit was lodged in a facility set away from all prying eyes on the other side of the air base. On the Cobra's instruction, they began to prowl as soon as installed.

Although operated on the air bases, the actual scanning was accomplished many miles away in the Nevada desert at U.S. Air Force Base Creech. Here, men sat at consoles staring at the screens. Each had a control column like that of a pilot in his cockpit.

What each operator saw on his screen was exactly what the Hawk could see staring down from the stratosphere. Some of the men and women in that quiet, air-conditioned control room at Creech had Predators hunting over Afghanistan and the border mountains leading to Pakistan. Others had Reapers over the Persian Gulf.

Each had earphones and a throat mike to receive instructions and inform higher authority if a target hove into view. The concentration was total and therefore the shifts short. The Creech control room was the face of wars to come.

With his dark humor, Cal Dexter gave each patrolling Hawk a nickname to tell them apart. The eastern one he called "Michelle," after the First Lady; the other one was "Sam," after the wife of the British Prime Minister.

And each had a separate task. Michelle was to gaze down, identify and track all merchant marine vessels identified by Juan Cortez and found and photographed by the TR-1. Sam was to find and report on everything flying or sailing out of the Brazilian coast between Natal and Belem, or heading eastward across the Atlantic passing longitude 40°, direction Africa.

Both the control decks at Creech in charge of the two Cobra Hawks were in direct touch with the dowdy warehouse in the Washington suburb, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. LETIZIA ARENAL knew what she was doing was wrong, against the strict instructions of her papa, but she could not help herself. He had told her never to leave Spain, but she was in love, and love trumped even his instructions.

Domingo de Vega had proposed to her and she had accepted. She wore his ring on her hand. But he had to return to his post in New York or lose it, and his birthday was in the last week of May. He had sent her an open ticket with Iberia to Kennedy and begged her to come and join him.

The formalities at the American Embassy had been accomplished as if on oiled wheels; she had her visa waiver and was cleared by Homeland Security.

Her ticket was in business class, and she checked in at Terminal 4 with hardly any wait. Her single valise was tagged for "New York Kennedy" and slid away down the conveyor belt to baggage handling. She took no notice of the man behind her hefting a large grip as his personal and only carry-on luggage.

She could not know it was full of newspapers or that he would turn away as soon as she disappeared toward security and passport control. She had never seen Inspector Paco Ortega before and she never would again. But he had memorized every detail of her single valise and of the clothes she was wearing. Her photo had been taken from long distance as she stepped from her cab at the curb. All would be in New York before she even set off.

But just to be on the safe side, he stood at an observation window, looking out at the airfield, and watched as, far away, the Iberia jet turned into the breeze, paused, then roared toward the still-snowcapped peaks of the Sierra de Guadarrama and the Atlantic. Then he called New York and had a few words with Cal Dexter.

The airliner was on time. There was a man in ground-staff uniform in the jetway as the passengers streamed off. He murmured two words into a cell phone, but no one took any notice. People do that all the time.

Letizia Arenal passed through passport control with no more than the usual formality of pressing one thumb after another onto a small glass panel and staring into a camera lens for iris recognition.

As she went through, the immigration official turned and nodded silently at a man who stood in the corridor the passengers were now taking toward the customs hall. The man nodded back and wandered after the young woman.

It was a heavy day for traffic, and the luggage was delayed by an extra twenty minutes. Eventually, the carousel gurgled, thumped into life, and suitcases began to spew onto the moving band. Her own case was neither first nor last but somewhere in the middle. She saw it tumble from the open mouth of the tunnel and recognized the bright yellow tag that she had affixed to help her pick it out.

It was a hard frame with wheels, so she slung her tote bag over her left shoulder and towed the valise toward the green channel. She was halfway through when one of the customs officers, as if standing idly by, beckoned to her. A spot check. Nothing to worry about. Domingo would be waiting for her in the concourse beyond the doors. He would have to wait a few minutes longer.

She pulled her case toward the table the officer indicated and lifted it. The latches were facing toward her.

"Would you please open your case, ma'am?" Scrupulously polite. They were always scrupulously polite, and they never smiled or joked. She unflicked the two catches. The officer turned the case around toward himself and lifted the lid. He saw the clothes ranged on top, and, with gloved hands, lifted off the top layer. Then he stopped. She realized he was staring at her over the top of the lid. She presumed he would now close it and nod that she could leave.

He closed it, and said very coldly, "Would you come with me, if you please, ma'am."

It was not a question. She became aware that a big man and a burly woman, also in the same uniforms, were standing close behind her. It was embarrassing; other passengers were staring sideways as they scuttled through.

The first officer snapped the catches closed, hefted the case and went ahead. The others, without a word spoken, came up behind. The first officer led them through a door in the corner. It was quite a bare room, with a table at the center, a few plain chairs against the walls. No pictures, two cameras in different corners. The valise went flat on the table.

"Would you please open your valise again, ma'am?"

It was the first inkling Letizia Arenal had that something might be wrong, but she had not a clue what it might be. She opened her case, saw her own neatly folded clothes.

"Would you take them out, please, ma'am?"

It was underneath the linen jacket, the two cotton skirts and the several folded blouses. Not large, about the size of a one-kilo bag of grocery-store sugar. Filled with what looked like talc. Then it hit her; like a wave of fainting nausea, a punch in the solar plexus, a silent voice in the head screaming:

No, it is not me, I did not do this, it is not mine, someone must have placed it there…

It was the burly woman who sustained her, but not out of any spirit of sympathy. For the cameras. So obsessional are the New York courts with the rights of the accused, and so keen are defense attorneys to pounce upon the tiniest infraction of the rules of procedure to procure a dismissal of a charge, that, from officialdom's point of view, not even the smallest formality may be ignored.

After the opening of the suitcase and the discovery of what at that point was simply unidentified white powder, Letizia Arenal went, in the official phrase, "into the system." Later it all seemed a single nightmarish blur.