The lawyer could add two and two and come up with four. The phony art-fan Vega was clearly part of a Madrid-based smuggling gang using his gigolo talents to recruit unsuspecting young women to act as "mules" by carrying cocaine into the U.S. He had little doubt that soon after his return to Colombia, there would be an army of Spanish and Colombian thugs coming to Madrid and New York to find the missing Vega.

The fool would be snatched, taken to Colombia, handed over to Cardenas and then God help him. Letizia told him there had been a photo of her fiance in her purse and a larger one in her flat in Moncloa. He made a mental note to demand the first back and have the larger one removed from the Madrid apartment. They would help in the search for the rogue behind this disaster. Luz calculated the young smuggler would not be hiding deep because he would not know who was coming for him, only that he had lost one of his cargoes.

He would, under torture, give up the name of the baggage handler who had inserted the bag of coke at Madrid. A full confession from him, and New York would have to drop the charge. So he reasoned.

Later, there was total denial of there being any photo of any young man in the purse confiscated at Kennedy, and the one in Madrid had already gone. Paco Ortega had seen to that. But first things first. Luz engaged the services of Mr. Boseman Barrow, of Manson Barrow, considered the finest advocate at the criminal bar of Manhattan. The sum involved for Mr. Barrow to drop everything and cross the river into Brooklyn was deeply impressive.

But as the two men returned from the federal correctional institution to Manhattan the following day, the New Yorker's face was grave. Internally, he was not so grave. He saw months and months of work at astronomical fees.

"Senor Luz, I must be brutally frank. Things are not good. Personally, I have no doubt your ward was lured into a disastrous situation by the cocaine smuggler who called himself Domingo de Vega and that she was unaware of what she was doing. She was duped. It happens all the time."

"So that is good," interjected the Colombian.

"It is good that I believe it. But if I am to represent her, I must. The problem is, I am neither the jury nor the judge, and I am certainly not the DEA, the FBI or the District Attorney. And a much bigger problem is that this Vega man has not only vanished, but there is not a shred of evidence that he existed."

The law firm's limousine crossed the East River and Luz stared down glumly at the gray water.

"But Vega was not the baggage handler," he protested. "There must be another man, the one in Madrid who opened her case and put in the package."

"We do not know that," sighed the Manhattan counselor. "He may have been the baggage handler as well. Or have had access to the baggage hall. He may have passed for an Iberia staffer or customs officer with right of access. He may even have been either of these things. How energetic will the Madrid authorities be to divert their precious resources to the task of trying to liberate one they probably see as a dope smuggler, and a non-Spanish to boot?"

They turned onto the East River Drive toward Boseman Barrow's comfort zone, downtown Manhattan.

"I have funds," protested Julio Luz. "I can engage private investigators on both sides of the Atlantic. How you say, 'the sky is the limit.' "

Mr. Barrow beamed down at his companion. He could almost smell the odor of the new wing on his mansion in the Hamptons. This was going to take many months.

"We have one powerful argument, Senor Luz. It is clear that the security apparatus at Madrid Airport screwed up badly."

"Screwed up?"

"Failed. In these paranoid days, all airline baggage heading to the U.S. should be X-ray screened at the airport of departure. Especially in Europe. There are bilateral compacts. The outline of the bag should have shown up at Madrid. And they have sniffer dogs. Why no sniffer dogs? It all points to an insertion after the usual checks…"

"Then we can ask they drop the charges?"

"On an administrative foul-up? I'm afraid dropping the charges is out of the question. As for our chances in court, without some blistering new evidence in her favor, not good. A New York jury simply will not believe a screwup in Madrid Airport is possible.

"They will look at the known evidence, not the protestations of the accused. One passenger from, of all places, Colombia; slipping through the Green Channel; one kilogram of Colombian pure; floods of tears. I am afraid it is very, very common. And the city of New York is getting very, very sick of it."

Mr. Barrow forebore to say that his own engagement would not look good either. Olympian quantities of money were associated by low-budget New Yorkers, the sort who end up on juries, with the cocaine trade. A real, innocent mule would be abandoned to the Legal Aid Office. But no need to secure his own departure from the case.

"What happens now?" asked Luz. His entrails were starting to melt again at the idea of confronting the volcanic temper of Roberto Cardenas with this.

"Well, she will soon appear before the Federal District Court for Brooklyn. The judge will not grant bail. That is a given. She will be transferred to an upstate federal jail on remand, pending trial. These are not nice places. She is not street hardened. Convent educated, you said? Oh dear. There are aggressive lesbians in these places. I am deeply sorry to say that. I doubt it is different in Colombia."

Luz put his face in his hands.

"Dios mio," he murmured. "How long there?"

"Well, not less than six months, I fear. Time for the Prosecutor's Office to prepare its case, somewhere in its vast workload. And for us, of course. For your private eyes to see what they can turn up."

Julio Luz also declined to be frank. He had no doubt a few private eyes would be Cub Scouts compared to the army of hard men Roberto Cardenas would unleash to find the destroyer of his daughter. But he was wrong in that. Cardenas would do no such thing, because Don Diego would find out. The Don did not know about the secret daughter, and the Don insisted on knowing everything. Even Julio Luz had thought she was the gangster's girlfriend and the envelopes he carried were her allowance. He had one last timid question. The limousine hissed through the slush to a halt outside the luxury office block whose penthouse floor housed the small but gold-plated law firm of Manson Barrow.

"If she is found guilty, Senor Barrow, what would be the sentence?"

"Hard to say, of course. Depends on mitigating evidence, if any; my own advocacy; the judge on the day. But I fear in the present mood it might be felt necessary to create an example. A deterrent. In the area of twenty years in a federal penitentiary. Thank heavens her parents are not around to see it."

Julio Luz moaned. Barrow took pity.

"Of course, the picture could be transformed if she became an informant. We call it 'plea bargaining.' The DEA does trade deals for insider information to catch the much bigger fish. Now, if…"

"She cannot," moaned Luz. "She knows nothing. She is truly innocent."

"Ah well, then… such a pity."

Luz was being quite truthful. He alone knew what the jailed young woman's father did, and he certainly did not dare to tell her. MAY SLIPPED into June, and Global Hawk Michelle silently glided and turned over the eastern and southern Caribbean, seeming like a real hawk to ride the thermals on an endless quest for prey. This was not the first time.

In the spring of 2006, a joint Air Force/DEA program had put a Global Hawk over the Caribbean from a base in Florida. It was a Maritime Demonstration Program, and short-term. In its brief time aloft, the Hawk managed to monitor hundreds of sea and air targets. It was enough to convince the Navy that BAMS, or Broad Aspect Maritime Surveillance, was the future, and it placed a huge order.