When terrorists known as the ETA -- Eternal Temperance Association -- kidnap the Spanish Ambassador to the United Nations from his Manhattan apartment, Detective First Grade Brian McKenna is ordered to assist the FBI until its people and resources are in position. However, the situation becomes complicated and personal when McKenna learns that two others have been kidnapped: the Spanish Ambassador to France and Carmen de la Cruz, a saintly philanthropist, one of the most revered women in all of Spain, and a friend of McKenna's. To try and make sense of the kidnappings, McKenna and his partner Detective First Grade Cisco Sanchez gather background information on the ETA. They learn that it was a powerful organization formed in the 1940's to assassinate key Spanish officials and diplomats in protest of Franco's mistreatment of the Basques. But times have changed: the Spanish government invests heavily in the Basque provinces, the schools are taught in the Basque language and the area basically functions autonomously.
McKenna and Cisco come to the conclusion that with the region's prosperity and relative autonomy, the ETA has fallen out of favor among the movement's former supporters. No longer needing to save the Basques, they intend to save themselves with this kidnapping, hoping to trade diplomats for amnesty.
A fast-paced novel that moves from the city to a safe-house upstate and finally to the Basque region of Spain, here is a police thriller with an international perspective.
