The Machiavelli Covenant

128

• 12:02 A.M.

Demi paced what was little more than a cell trying not to think of the horror Luciana had promised for "tomorrow," which, with the turn of the clock, was already here.

In front of her a small stainless-steel bunk was covered with a thin mattress and single blanket. As if she could sleep, or even try to. Next to it was a washbasin and next to that a toilet. And then there was the chapel. Set into the wall in the center of the room and lighted with what seemed a hundred votive candles. Little more than three feet wide and two deep, a small marble altar was at the back and on it sat something that at first appeared to be a piece of bronze sculpture. But when she looked at it closely she saw it was not a sculpture as much as a welding together of two letters.

μ

Then she realized they were what Giacomo Gela had spoken of-a Hebrew A followed by the Greek M. It wasn't a sculpture, it was an idol, the sign of AradiaMinor, the secretive order inside the already secretive boschetto of the Aldebaran. It meant everything he had warned her of was true and told her they had known who she was all along and had simply stepped back and watched her, wanting to see how much she knew and who else might be involved. It was why Beck had invited her to Barcelona after the incident between Foxx and Nicholas Marten on Malta, a deliberate plan to see who, if anyone, would follow. And Marten had. The trip to the cathedral with Beck and Luciana had not been for Luciana to arrange a meeting with Foxx at Montserrat but for the same reason, to see who would follow. Again Marten had. It was why, too, Beck had agreed to bring her to the church to witness the coven's rituals in return for delivering Marten to Foxx. In delivering Marten she had also delivered herself and in the process seen in the fiery death of the ox her own horrific fate. Afterward they'd simply brought her here and locked the door.

Just what the ancient cult of Aradia Minor was she had no idea, but she was certain Gela had been purposely mutilated and left to live as an example of what awaited anyone who might try to find out. Clearly they had watched Gela for years for that very reason, to see who was interested enough to find him, and then to learn who that person was and why they had come, and who else they might have told. It made her wonder how many others there had been over the centuries who had pursued the same course as she and fallen prey to the same unspeakable horror.

The same terrible burning horror that would soon be hers. The same horror that had been her mother's and that of twenty-six other women in her family. The same as it had been for the mothers, daughters, aunts, sisters, and cousins of other Italian families selected over the centuries. The same as it would be today, and not just for her but for Cristina.

Abruptly Demi stopped her pacing and crossed back to the altar. Before, in the church and under Luciana's gaze, the monks had stripped her of her cameras, then blindfolded her and led her down an extraordinarily long flight of steps. Soon afterward they'd put her onto some kind of open-air transport that moved quickly forward on a ride she was certain had been underground. After that they'd brought her to the cell where she was now, locking her in and leaving without a word.

But that had been all. They had not bothered to search her, either in the church or here when they brought her in and removed the blindfold. It meant she still had the hidden smart phone/camera she had used to transmit photos to her Web site in Paris. It was something that gave her hope because she still had communication out-although two unsuccessful tries here told her she was too far underground for the signal to escape whatever was above her. Still, she had both phone and camera. The phone she would do everything in her power to use later, when hopefully they brought her to an area where she would have connectivity and could somehow steal a moment alone to call the Pan-European emergency number 112 and ask for the police. The camera she would use now to help her keep what little sanity she had left, to prevent her from dwelling on the horrifying certainty of what was to come in the next few hours.

Demi knelt before the altar and began to photograph the idol, the symbol of Aradia Minor. She took pictures aggressively and passionately and from every angle. As she worked she began to realize that what she was doing was more than a deliberate distraction; it was a last desperate hope that in one way or another she might find a bridge to the Other Side and somehow touch her mother. To make contact with the spirit of who she had been, and to Demi, still was, even in death. In doing so, she would not only fulfill her promise to her but also to find everlasting love and salvation.

129

• 12:07 A.M.

Hector and Amado stood in the bright light of the command post. They were dirty and scraped and afraid, but so far they hadn't broken. Not to the Secret Service and Spanish CNP officers that had caught them in the tunnel. Not to the CIA investigators who had talked to them next. Or the half dozen Secret Service and CNP troops that had brought them back up through the chimneys and walked them through the rain to the command post. Both had stood by their story: they had simply come up that morning to explore the tunnels and become lost.

"What time?" Captain Diaz asked in Spanish.

"Nine thirty, about," was their agreed-upon answer, the one they had decided on in the seconds before the troops were first upon them.

"Where do you live?" Captain Diaz continued.

Bill Strait and National Security Adviser James Marshall stood behind her; each man fully intent on the proceedings.

"El Borràs, by the river," Amado answered.

"Just you two. Alone. No one else with you."

"Yes. I mean, no. I mean just us."

Captain Diaz studied the boys for a moment and walked over to a CNP officer. "Let's talk to them separately," she said, then walked back to the boys.

"Which one is Hector?"

Hector raised his hand.

"Good. You stay with me. Amado is going to talk to some people on the far side of the tent."

Hector watched as Amado went off with two CNP officers.

"Now, Hector," Captain Diaz said, "you live in El Borràs."

"Yes."

"Tell me how you got here. From the river to this mountaintop."

• 12:12 A.M.

Hector watched as Captain Diaz left him and crossed the tent to talk with one of the CNP officers who had gone off with Amado. Nervously he glanced at Bill Strait and the exceedingly tall and distinguished man with him. Both were clearly American. For the first time he was aware of the people and equipment around him. He had seen radios and computer setups in movies but they had been nothing like this. Nor had he ever heard anything like the constant crackle of communication between the operators here and the people they were talking with outside. And nothing ever like the absolute seriousness of the atmosphere.

He took a breath as he saw Captain Diaz come back, stopping midway to say something to Bill Strait and the man with him, and then all three came toward him.

"There seems to be a conflict here, Hector," Captain Diaz said calmly. "You told me you hiked up from the river. Amado seems to remember you riding up on motorcycles."

"Hector," Bill Strait was looking at him directly, "we know you and Amado weren't the only people down there." He paused for Captain Diaz to translate.

"Yes, we were," Hector protested. "Who else would be with us?"

"The president of the United States."

"No," Hector said defiantly. He needed no translation. "No."

"Hector, listen to me carefully. When we find the president we will know you were lying and you will go to prison for a very, very long time."

Captain Diaz's translation was delivered as if what Bill Strait had said was already a given, a twenty- or thirty-year prison sentence handed down by a judge.

"No," he said, "we were alone. Amado and me. Nobody else. Ask your men. They looked, they found nothing."

Suddenly Hector felt a presence and looked up. Amado came toward him accompanied by two CNP officers. His complexion was white, his eyes filled with tears. There was no need for words. What had happened was all too clear.

He had told them.

130

• 12:18 A.M.

The ascent from the lower chimney to the main tunnel had been done with relative ease. The next, the hundred-yard marching along it, had been made quickly and without incident even in the dark. Then José had found the opening to the upper chimney, the one Hap, Miguel, he, Amado, and Hector had come down in what felt like days, even weeks earlier.

They were in it and climbing when Hap suddenly grunted and stopped. Miguel put a narrow flashlight beam on him and they could see the color had drained from him and that he was sweating heavily. Quickly Miguel gave him water from his camel pack and insisted he take another pain pill and he had.

Now the five sat in stillness, giving him a chance to rest and wait for the medication to take effect. In another circumstance they might have left him and gone on alone with his blessing but they couldn't. He had walked the entire Aragon resort only weeks earlier in preparation for the president's visit and knew the details of its layout as only a man with his training and experience could. If they were going to make it at all, they needed Hap. Whether a short rest would be enough, there was no way to know.

• 12:23 A.M.

"The football, Mr. President," Marten said in the darkness and for no other reason than he'd been thinking about it, "that black satchel the public sees a military aide carrying around everywhere the president goes. I assume it really does have the codes for launching nuclear missiles."

"Yes."

"Excuse my asking but where is it now?"

"I would assume 'my friends' have it. I couldn't very well have taken it with me when I left."

"Your 'friends' have it?"

"It doesn't make any difference."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"There's more than one," Hap suddenly joined the conversation.

"What?"

"The president has one when he travels. There's another tucked away at the White House and a third is available to the vice president in the event the president is unable to function. Such as now."

"You mean they have it anyway."

"Yes, they have it anyway… Any other questions?"

"Not for the moment."

"Good," Hap suddenly pushed himself to his feet. "Let's get moving before more 'rescuers' arrive."

• 12:32 A.M.

They stopped a dozen feet short of the chimney opening and sent José to the top as they had before.

• 12:36 A.M.

José climbed back down and spoke to Miguel in Spanish. Miguel listened and then turned to the others. "There are low clouds and it is raining," he translated quietly. "He heard nothing and saw no lights. When we get out, we follow him closely over open rock. Very soon there will be a steep path; it goes up for a short distance, then cuts back down through some brush and continues down through switchbacks for maybe a half mile before it ends in an arroyo. Afterward we follow the arroyo to a stream crossing. On the other side we pick up a trail through the woods that goes for at least another two miles before we hit an open space."

"Then what?" the president asked.

"We'll see when we get that far," Hap said flatly. "The weather will reduce the effectiveness of thermal imaging, but this is a game of little steps. If we cover almost three miles in the dark and rain without attracting visitors, that's huge. I hope not impossible."

"Are you up to it?" the president was genuinely concerned about Hap's condition.

"I'm ready when you are, Mr. President."

131

• 12:38 A.M.

It had taken Jim Marshall nearly twenty minutes to locate the vice president and have him connected to a secure phone. Word that the president had been seen alive, and in the shafts, and with a man fitting the description of Nicholas Marten within the past hour had disturbed the vice president but not enough to steer either him or Marshall off course. To both it was the same as it had been from the beginning when the president had gone missing in Madrid and then was located in Barcelona: he was either Marten's prisoner or he was mentally ill. In a way the situation now was better than it had been because they knew for certain where he was. Hundreds of people were zeroed in on the area with more on the way. It was only a matter of time, hours, maybe even minutes, before he was found. After that he would be in their custody and on his way out of Spain and to their isolated undisclosed location in Switzerland.

"You're right there on top of it, Jim. Nobody better to make sure it happens the way it needs to," the vice president reassured him.

"You'll inform the others."

"Right away. Let me know the minute you have him and are airborne."

"Done," Marshall said, and hung up. Immediately he went to find Bill Strait, who, along with Captain Diaz, was caught in the adrenaline-driven rush to coordinate the movements of people still underground while managing the setup and logistics for the wave of new forces being scrambled to come in.

Marshall pulled Strait aside to walk him through the confusion of the command post tent and out into the rain, where they could be alone.

"Once he's found, he and Marten are to be separated right away. Take Marten into our custody and fly him to the embassy in Madrid to be held there incommunicado for debriefing.

"No questions to the president by anyone, no conversation with him at all other than medical if he needs it. He's brought straight to the Chinook, the door closes, and we go, wheels up right then. That's it. Nothing else at all. Anyone questions it, it is a direct order from the vice president. Make certain everyone knows. Your people, CIA, Captain Diaz and her ops, everyone."

"Yes, sir."

132

• 12:43 A.M

They looked like ghosts.

Survival blankets over their heads Mylar side out and belted loosely around their bodies, eyeholes cut, the four followed José out of the fracture at the top of the chimney and then across a flat rock face to a steep narrow path between high rock formations. A few feet more and they stopped and listened. Nothing but the sound of the wind and the gentle beat of the rain on Mylar.

Miguel nodded and José led them on. Marten was second, then the president, then Hap, and then Miguel. Hap with the 9mm Sig Sauer automatic held just inside the Mylar, covering Miguel doing the same, his finger on the trigger of the Steyr machine pistol.

• 12:49 A.M.

They were on the far side of the rocks and descending along a steep, brush-lined path made up of gravelly sandstone. In the dark and rain it was impossible to know if they were leaving tracks that could be followed later. The other thing was the Mylar. At this point it was impossible to tell if their body heat was reading "cold" to the satellite watching from God-only-knew-how-many-miles-above-them or if their body signatures had already been read "hot" and heavily armed ops were on their way to intercept them.

Marten looked up through the rain, trying to see the ridgeline above them, his view narrowed by the eyeholes cut in the Mylar. He saw nothing but blackness and started to look away. In that second he saw a bright light swing over the hilltop.

"Everybody down!" he warned.

As one the men dropped to the ground, pulling back toward the brush. Seconds later one and then two jet helicopters passed over, their bright searchlights sliding over the hillside just above them. Then they were gone.

"The extra bodies are here," Hap said in the darkness. "There'll be a lot more. They weren't looking for us, just going in to land. Means, for the moment, they still think we're underground."

"Then these Mylars are working," Miguel said.

"Or somebody's not paying attention. Or the satellite's not working or it's out of orbit," Hap said. "Every second they give us, we'll take." Abruptly he stood up. "Let's go! Move!"

• 12:53 A.M.

Captain Diaz touched Bill Strait's arm. He turned to look at her.

"CNP helicopter pilot coming in reported a reflection of something on the ground five kilometers before he touched down," she said. "He's not sure what it was, maybe debris of some kind or even someone camping. He didn't think much of it at the time but then thought he should report it anyway. Pilot of the second chopper saw nothing."

"You have the coordinates?"

"Yes, sir."

"Send them both back out now. See what's there. I want to know right away."

"Excuse me, sir. Night, in these mountains, in the rain. The pilots can't see. It's dangerous enough just trying to bring more troops up here."

"I appreciate that, Captain. He's our president, not yours. I still would appreciate it if you would send your pilots back out."

Captain Diaz hesitated.

"Would you feel better if the order came from your people in Madrid?"

"Yes, sir."

"So would I. Please send them anyway."

Captain Diaz nodded slowly, then turned away, giving the orders into her headset.

Christ, Strait thought, it can't be them. How the hell could they get out of the tunnels without us knowing?

Abruptly he crossed to the young Secret Service tech working the satellite feed. "Thermal images," he said. "What the hell is the bird reading?"

The tech moved aside so that Strait could see his computer screen. With a dozen clicks he covered the entire mountaintop search area. In each small groups of hot objects stood out brightly from the darkness. "Our own people, sir. Nothing new. Rain and length of time since darkness doesn't help but it's nothing we don't have control of."

"There's a new sector to focus on. Captain Diaz will give you the coordinates."

"Yes, sir."

"Bill," James Marshall was pushing through Secret Service and CNP techs, coming toward him. "I was with one of your agents interrogating the kid Amado, the one who broke. He didn't tell us everything. Two other people were down there too. His uncle, a limousine driver, and somebody who fits Hap's description. He's the one who sent them to us with their story about being lost."

"Hap is down there?"

"I don't know if he is or he isn't. Or what the hell is going on. I want all of his communications signals monitored, his cell, his BlackBerry, everything."

"That order is already standing, sir. I put it in the minute he went missing."

"If he is down there he can't communicate by phone with anyone until he gets on the surface. The minute he's found he's to be brought directly here. I don't want him talking to anyone but me. If it is him, and the president is with him, we're home free. They're on the Chinook and on their way to the CIA jet, and finally we can shut the door on this whole damn thing."

133

• 1:05 A.M.

Demi lay on the stainless-steel bunk, the terror of what lay ahead overwhelming her. More than anything she wanted to sleep, to make it all go away, but she knew that if she did it would be the last sleep of her life, and when she woke all that would be left would be the unspeakable: taken from this cell to the amphitheater or some other arena and burned alive, maybe even alongside Cristina, a featured part of some ancient ritual where-she wished she could laugh at the irony-it was the witches who did the burning.

The idea that by this time tomorrow she would no longer exist brought with it the thought that but for the few articles and photographs she had published there was nothing to mark her existence. No real accomplishments, no contributions to society, no husband, no children, nothing at all. The best she could point to was a string of lovers over the years, not one of whom she had given enough of herself to even to be remembered, let alone wept for. Her life after the age of eight had been one of survival followed by the quest for her mother and her mother's fate, and nothing more. Now she had learned it, and that same fate had become her own.

Suddenly she thought of Nicholas Marten and President Harris, and her own fear and horror became compounded by terrible guilt. If they had fallen into the same kind of trap she had, only God could help them. It was like some biblical reckoning where the profoundly innocent paid for another's driving self-interest with their lives. And there was nothing she could do about it except to cry out "what have I done?" and ask for forgiveness.

She closed her eyes, trying to make everything go away. And for a time it did. She saw only darkness and heard the sound of her own breathing. Then, somewhere far off, she thought she heard the chanting of the monks. Little by little the voices rose. The chanting became louder, and more intense. She opened her eyes. When she did she saw what looked like a large photograph of her mother projected on the ceiling directly over her. It was the same photograph she'd found so long ago in her mother's trunk and had cherished for as long as she could remember. The one taken in the days just before she vanished. She was young and beautiful, the way she would have looked when the witches burned her to death.

In the next instant the ceiling above her erupted in fire and the photograph vanished.

Demi screamed out and leapt from the bunk in terror! Heart pounding she looked back to the ceiling but there was nothing. It was as blank as it had been before. It had been a dream, Demi knew. But if it was, why had she heard the chant of the monks? A sound and chant that still filled the tiny room.

Suddenly the icon of Aradia Minor glowed red in the cell's chapel. At the same time the voices of the monks grew louder, and then the entire wall beside her came alive with a video of her mother. She was seen in close-up, barefoot and wearing a clinging white dress like the one Cristina had worn and was bound to a massive stake on some surreal stage. The camera went to the floor at her feet. A ring of gas jets suddenly ignited. The camera pulled back as the flames grew higher. Slowly the lens crept in. It moved closer and closer until all that was visible were her mother's eyes. In them Demi saw not the peace that had rested in the eyes of the great ox but the pure horror of being burned alive. She saw her mother fight her bonds, saw her try to twist away. Glimpsed her mouth as it opened, then heard the terrible, ghastly shriek that came from within her. In seconds the fire overtook her and she was consumed in flame.

Demi screamed again and turned away. But there was no turning away. Every piece of wall, the floor, the ceiling, carried the images she had just seen, played over and over and over. As if to make her witness the hell of her mother's death a thousandfold. She closed her eyes and clamped her hands over her ears, spinning this way and that, doing anything she could to block the chanting. But it kept on. Becoming louder and louder until it occupied every part of her being.

It went on relentlessly. For how long? Seconds. Minutes. Hours. Then suddenly the chanting stopped and silence took over. Slowly Demi opened her eyes, praying to God it was over.

Not quite.

In the absolute stillness came the next. Every photograph she had taken with the Canon digital since she'd first arrived in Malta and secretly transmitted to her Web site in Paris.

One after another. Every photograph.

Merriman Foxx. Nicholas Marten. Cristina. Reverend Beck. Luciana. Foxx's monastery office at Montserrat. Their table at the restaurant when Beck had brought Marten there. Her arrival at the Church within the Mountain. The room where Cristina had come to bring her her dress. The parade of the monks to the amphitheater. The children. Their families. The animals. The owls. The death of the ox.

And then there was the last.

The photographs she had transmitted only a short while before. The photographs of the icon of Aradia Minor taken in the tiny chapel directly across from her. The icon she had so passionately and frantically photographed from every angle and through which she had so desperately hoped to somehow touch the soul of her mother. It was all there, each and every shot from beginning to end.

They had not only known who she was, but what she had been doing and how, all along.

134

• 1:22 A.M.

Hap are you out there? Are you with POTUS?

This is extremely URGENT! Please respond immediately!

Bill.

Hap clicked the BlackBerry off, powering it down as quickly as he could to avoid the electronic detection he knew Bill Strait would have ordered.

What Strait's text message meant was that they had broken the boys' story and were trying to determine if they were out of the tunnels and above ground. It was the reason for the dual helicopter flyover and spotlight surveillance in the canyon where they had been the first time the helos had come over. By that time they were at the bottom of the trail and already in the arroyo. From the sound, distant as it was, he was sure the machines had set down, meaning they had probably put more ops on the ground.

Dark or not, rain or not, they were already hard after them.

Abruptly he dropped back to Miguel. "I don't know if we've left tracks they can follow but we need to get into some water. Stream, rain runoff, anyplace where we can keep going but not leave tracks."

Miguel nodded and moved ahead to catch up with José.

• 1:25 A.M.

Captain Diaz turned to look at Bill Strait. "CNP detachment. They've found fresh imprints in the ground. Not clear enough to confirm if they're human."

"What do they think?" James Marshall was right there.

Diaz spoke Spanish into her headset and turned back. "Two people, maybe more. The rain's washed most all of it away. Still, it's possible they were made by animals."

"How many men are out there?" Marshall asked.

"Twenty. Two units, ten each."

Marshall turned to Bill Strait. "Quadruple that fast. Secret Service and CIA."

"Yes, sir."

"Still nothing from the satellite?"

"No, sir. 'Cold' read back only. We'd do a lot better without this rain and dark."

"We'd do a lot better without any of it."

• 1:44 A.M.

They were knee-deep in a fast-running wash, normally dry but now nearly a ten-foot-wide river of runoff. The darkness and uncertainty underfoot made progress slow. The Mylar survival blankets seemed to have worked so far, but they made breathing difficult, and seeing through the eyeholes would have been difficult even in daylight. Moreover, deep fatigue was beginning to take over, for the young José as well as the others.

Absently Marten reached into his jacket pocket, touching Merriman Foxx's security card and BlackBerry-like device he still carried. They were both evidence of sorts, which was why he had kept them. He worried now about the water affecting the electronics in the BlackBerry but there was nothing he could do to protect it. Deliberately he dropped back to walk beside the president.

"Mr. President, we need to rest. All of us, José too. We lose him and we're just four guys wandering around in the dark."

The president started to respond but his words were cut off by the thundering, thudding roar of a military attack helicopter as it suddenly twisted through the canyon over the stream and came right toward them. Its twenty million candlepower searchlight swinging back and forth, illuminating the way for the pilot and at the same time lighting up the ground below in swaths as bright as day.

"Down!" Marten yelled.

The five hit the water an instant before the helo passed over.

"Did he see us?" The president lifted his head.

"Don't know," Hap cried.

"The trees!" José cried in Spanish. "There are trees on the bank to the right."

Miguel's translation was shouted.

"Go for them!" Hap yelled, and they moved fast. One after the other scrambling up a steep hillside and into the cover of conifer forest.

• 1:53 A.M.

"What now?" Miguel looked back at the stream, then squatted down next to the rest.

"We'll see in about twenty seconds," Hap said quietly and looked to the president. "Woody," he said.

"I know."

"Who or what is Woody?" Marten asked.

"Major George Herman Woods. Pilots Marine One, the presidential helicopter. Former combat officer. Thinks he's a real man's flier. And he is. Unfortunately."

Hap's twenty-second estimate took twelve. This time they heard the thudding chop of the helo's rotors before they saw the aircraft. Again it came through the canyon on the same twisting route it had taken the first time. As quickly it passed and was gone. Up and over a steep ravine, its red tail rotor light blinking as it went.

"If he saw us the first time he would have turned back and hovered," Miguel said.

"No," Hap said, "he took the same exact path as the first time. He was shooting video. Thought he saw something the first time; now they'll look at each pass and compare."

"Miguel," the president said suddenly. "What time is sunrise?"

"A little before eight. First light by seven."

The president looked to José. "How far is it to the resort now? By miles and by time?" he asked in Spanish.

"About eight miles the way we would have to go, keeping under trees and trying to stay to places we won't leave tracks. Nearly three hours more."

For a moment everything was silent. The only sound the rush of the water in the wash below and the pit-pat of the rain as it dripped from the trees. Then, in the darkness, Miguel spoke.

"José," he said quietly in Spanish. "The president speaks Spanish well enough. Can you lead them on your own?"

"Why?" the president asked.

"Who knows what the helicopter camera saw. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Maybe they can't tell. If one man leaves here and makes enough tracks for people to follow and the others go off over the rocks leaving no trail-" His voice drifted off then came back. "Who knows how many they think they are looking for but they want only one. The president. We bought time with Hector and Amado. Maybe I can buy us time this way."

"Miguel, we don't know anything," the president said.

"I think we can guess, Cousin." Abruptly Miguel stood and slipped the Steyr machine pistol from beneath his Mylar blanket. "I won't need this. They see I have a gun, they might get nervous," he handed it to Hap. "Follow José, I will see you again when it is time. Good luck to you all." Abruptly he turned, took his bearings, and walked off without another word.

They watched him go for the briefest moment then Hap looked to the president. "Mr. President, tell José to move us out."

135

• 2:00 A.M.

We're starting our first run down the canyon here." U.S. Marine Corps Major George Herman "Woody" Woods, thirty-five-year-old pilot of the presidential helicopter Marine One and volunteer pilot of one of six attack helicopters scrambled to fly the night reconnaissance for the presidential rescue operation stood in the command post center alongside Bill Strait, National Security Advisor Marshall, and Captain Diaz watching the replay of the dual videos he had shot flying through the treacherous canyons above the fast-moving mountain stream.

"We're coming over the water. Slow it please," Woods said. The Secret Service tech running the video slowed it down. "This section here, the searchlight's off a little but-stop it there, please."

The tech did. And they could see what looked like parts of some kind of reflective material in the water.

"Move it on slowly," Woods said. The tech did. "There's a tree branch. It's not moving. Neither is whatever it is in the water. That current's moving fast. If they were trash bags or some kind of plastic they'd be going with it. Second video please. Same area."

The tech touched a keyboard and Woody's second pass-over started. "Slow it, slow it," he said as the helo came in over the same area. This time the searchlight was focused on the spot where the reflective material had been seen in the first video. "Stop it, please." The tech did. The water where the reflective pieces had been was black. Nothing but water. "There was something there before, second pass it's gone."

"Enhance the video," Strait said, and looked to Woods. "What do you think?"

"I think we ought to get back out there and damn fast."

"Woody," Strait said, "something you should know. There's a good chance Hap is with the president."

"What?"

"A man fitting his description was with POTUS underground. I tried to raise him by cell and BlackBerry. Nothing. We don't know what's going on."

"You don't think he's in on something."

"Woody, we don't know. You find them, just be damned careful. Our foremost objective is the president."

"I understand."

136

• 2:22 A.M.

The four were tucked under a thick blanket of trees high on a steep hillside when they saw the three attack helicopters. They came in high, then quickly dropped down and out of sight on the far side of the stream a good mile from where they were. Sixty seconds later the helos rose up again and then started slowly, one after the other, down along the stream, their searchlights swinging back and forth, covering the entire area.

"They've landed ground troops," Hap said.

Immediately the president looked to José and spoke in Spanish. "Where do we go from here?"

"Over the top of this hill and then down for about twenty minutes. After that we cross the stream again."

"That's where we hit the open space you were talking about."

"Yes."

"How open?"

"Two hundred yards. Then we are past it and back onto hard rock and through forest, going down toward the resort."

"How far then?"

"You want to go fast, yes?"

"Yes."

"Then we go down a chute between the rocks, a couloir as the French call it. It is shale rock and very steep, but we can save nearly two miles of trail and almost forty minutes of time. And because of the rock formations above, it would be hard for the helicopters."

The president looked to Marten and Hap and translated, then asked. "Do we chance this chute in the darkness, this couloir?"

"Your decision," Marten said.

The president turned to Hap. "How's the shoulder?"

"I'm alright. Go for the chute."

"Want another pain pill?"

"No," Hap said, then, "yes… please."

"Mr. President," Marten said quietly. "We didn't get the chance to rest before. We're getting worn down. Not just Hap, all of us. We need to take the chance and rest a little or we're not going to make it at all."

"You're right," the president looked to Hap. "You be our timetable. When you're ready, say so."

"Yes, sir."

• 2:32 A.M.

"Ready," Hap said, and abruptly stood. The others got up with him, ready to move.

Marten held them up. "Hap, at the risk of telling you your business, our job is to see that the president gets to the resort and up in front of those people. Your pilot friend Woody's job and the job of everyone else they brought in is to find him and take him the hell out of here."

"What are you saying?" Hap asked.

"You have a 9mm and a machine pistol. Give me one or the other."

Hap hesitated then reached into his belt under the survival blanket, slid out the 9mm Sig Sauer, and gave it to Marten.

"Know how to use it?"

"Yeah, I know how to use it."

137

• TRAIN #243, PARIS TO BERLIN, 2:48 A.M.

Victor lay back against his seat, unable to sleep. Across from him a young woman sat reading, her delicate features lit by a small overhead lamp. He glanced down the rest of the car. Save for one other reading lamp it was dark, the handful of other passengers sleeping.

The girl across from him turned the page and kept on reading, seemingly unaware he was watching her. She was blond and not particularly attractive but in her own way-how she held herself as she read, the way she turned the pages with one finger-intriguing. He thought she might be twenty-five, maybe a little older. He saw no wedding band and wondered if she was married and simply chose not to wear a ring, or if she was single, or perhaps even divorced. He watched her for a little longer then looked away to stare off vacantly into the semidarkness.

He had looked away purposely because he was afraid he would be caught staring at her and that such a thing might make her nervous. Still, he couldn't help thinking about her. The train would reach Berlin in a little over five hours. What would happen then? Did she have friends, family, someone to meet her? Or was she alone? And if she was, did she have a job or a home, at least somewhere to go?

Suddenly he felt an almost overwhelming need to protect her. As if she were his wife or his sister or even his daughter. It was then and for the first time he realized why he was here and why they had sent him. To take action to protect her and people like her before something happened. He was a preventive force.

It was why he had done what they had asked in Washington, why he had done as Richard had asked and walked through the Atocha Station terrorist bombing site in Madrid, why he had killed the jockeys in Chantilly, and why Richard had put him on this train, sending him to Berlin and then on to Warsaw, where he had promised him the most significant situation of his life. Where, if he carried out his directives properly, a major step toward halting the spread of terrorism would begin. The circumstances he knew would be complex, even dangerous, but he wasn't afraid or even nervous. Instead he was honored, knowing that if he succeeded he would be helping to protect the lives of innocent people everywhere. People like the young woman reading her book across from him now.

138

• 3:03 A.M.

They'd followed a slippery, dangerous trail downhill for a little over a mile in the dark before they reached the stream bank where they were now, stopped on a low rise, waiting as José went down to the water's edge trying to get some sense of the best place to cross the rushing current. So far they had seen nothing of the ground troops and assumed they were probably still in the hills behind them, though there was no way to be sure.

Ten minutes earlier the attack helicopters had abruptly pulled away from where they had been crisscrossing the area upstream and flown off to the southwest. It made them think Miguel had been found and was doing everything he could to delay them because so far they hadn't come back.

Marten moved partway down the bank, trying to pick José out in the dark. This was no time for their only guide to misstep and be swept away by the churning water. He was nearly to the young Spaniard when the wind suddenly picked up. For the briefest moment the clouds parted and the moon shone through. As it did, Marten saw shadows coming down the hill behind them. In front of him, across the water, was the two-hundred-yard-wide unprotected area José had described. Then the clouds returned and the moonlight faded.

Quickly he went to José. "Men are coming down the hill behind us. We have to cross the water and then the open space fast, before the moon shows again."

• 3:07 A.M.

They clasped arms in a human chain to get across. Difficult enough under normal circumstances, next to impossible while trying to keep their balance against the force of cascading water and at the same time stay beneath the Mylar blankets. The order of alignment now, the same as it had been: José, then Marten, then the president, then Hap.

"Look," Marten said as something above the high ridge upstream caught his eye. Immediately the searchlight of an attack helicopter swung across the mountainside and started down over the stream coming right at them, its light playing on the hillside where they had been and where they could now see at least a dozen uniformed men rushing down toward the water.

"José, go, go!" the president yelled.

The teenager moved as if he had been shot. In seconds he was on the far bank and helping the others up. Then they turned and ran, crossing the open space and slipping into the trees a heartbeat before the helo reached the site where they had forded the stream. Abruptly it pulled up, swinging the searchlight over the open area and toward the trees where they were and then back across the stream and the hillside where they had been. Further up they saw the second and third helos crisscrossing the stream, their searchlights playing over it and the rugged hillsides on either side.

• 3:13 A.M.

They were in the thick woods, climbing through increasingly difficult and complex rock formations. José looked back, then stopped and waited for the others to catch up. All were nearly spent-their legs turning to rubber, gasping to draw in air under the thin Mylar blankets, by now fighting just to keep moving at all.

• 3:15 A.M.

They crouched at the base of a massive boulder, hidden in the close overhang of a long-dead tree fallen against it. Seconds later an attack helicopter made a pass directly overhead, the beam of its searchlight lighting up the rock formations and casting enormous shadows through the trees. A second helo followed in its path. And then came a third.

"¡Por aquí!" This way! José yelled as soon as it passed. In a blink they were up and moving.

• 3:17 A.M.

"¡Por aquí!" He yelled again, turning sharply off the trail and squeezing through a narrow slit at the base of two towering sandstone pillars. The others followed on the run, slipping through behind him.

"It is called 'The Devil's Slide.' It is very steep and very far to the bottom. Pretend this is a game and you are blindfolded. Follow my sound and just slide with it!" José said quickly in Spanish. As rapidly the president translated.

"Okay?" José asked in English.

"Go," the president said.

"Sí." Instantly the teenager stepped off into the blackness and was gone. They could hear him below, sliding on the shale as he went down. From high above came the distant thudding chop of the helos.

"You're next, Hap," the president ordered.

"Yes, sir," Hap nodded and, with a glance at Marten, stepped over the side.

Marten looked at the president and half smiled. "Promise kept. You didn't die in the tunnel."

"We're not going to die here either." Now it was the president's turn to smile. "I hope."

"So do I. You're next, Cousin. Go!"

The president nodded, then abruptly turned and slid into the pitch black. Marten waited for him to clear the space beneath, then took a breath and followed.

• 3:19 A.M.

It was as if they had stepped into an elevator shaft. The chute was as José had said, very steep and very far to the bottom. Steeper and farther than any of them had imagined. Straight down through the blackness. Those above showered the ones below with pieces of flying shale.

José. Hap. The president. Marten. Plummeting down sightless. Standing on one foot and then the other. Each trying wildly to keep his balance while the earth slid out from under him. Each man above hoping to hell he didn't overtake the man below him.

Marten bounced off an unseen wall of rock to his right, that all but knocked the wind out of him. He pushed himself up and shifted to the left, hoping he could remain centered and not run into a wall on the other side.

He heard a heavy grunt below as the president hit something. He wanted to yell out, ask if he was alright but he was moving too fast. Suddenly he was afraid that if the president had been hurt he would slide right past him in the dark and not know it. The idea of reaching bottom and then having to climb back was no idea at all because it would be impossible. The shale would never hold. Then he heard the president cry out again as he hit something else and knew at least he was still in front of him.

A half second later his right foot caught on something and pitched him headfirst down the hill. He slid at terrifying speed, desperately flinging out one arm and then the other trying to slow himself. Then his right arm encircled a large rock. He jerked himself toward it and stopped. He was dazed and breathless. Then he saw the searchlights of the helicopters sweeping the forested rock formations above. It made him fear that at any moment their pilots would realize what had happened and suddenly swoop down to light up the entire area, at the same time sending a wave of troops cascading down in pursuit. Or worse, they would be waiting at the bottom when he finally got there. If he got there. Another breath and he stood. Then again stepped off into the dark.

139

• 3:24 A.M.

Miguel stood inside the command post with his arms folded over his chest. Captain Diaz stood in front of him. So did Bill Strait. So too did Dr. James Marshall. Hector and Amado were off to one side, silent, in the custody of two CNP officers. To Miguel's relief and delight, everyone seemed to be as exhausted as he was. It meant the longer he could drag this out, the longer it would be before they took action.

Hap had bought the president, Marten, and himself precious time earlier by giving up Hector and Amado. Miguel had given them a bit more by going off on his own and then watching the movement of the helicopter searchlights from the hilltop. When he'd seen the helos start downstream he'd taken off the Mylar blanket and exposed himself to the satellite's thermal imaging. It had worked almost instantly. In seconds the three helos pulled away and headed straight for him. Less than a minute later he was in the blaze of a searchlight. Then the helos touched down and armed men came running.

He'd told them his story at gunpoint, then repeated it to CNP and U.S. Secret Service agents in the helicopter on the way here. And now he was determined to tell it once more. Using up time was everything.

"Look," he said patiently in his Australian-accented Barcelonan English. "I will try and explain it to you once again. My name is Miguel Balius. I am a limousine driver from Barcelona. I came to visit my cousin in El Borràs. When I arrived he was not there and his wife was crazy because my nephew Amado and his friend Hector were missing. Amado," he pointed at his nephew, "is that chap there. Hector is him," he gestured directly at Hector. "They were gone all day, did not come home for supper, nobody knows where they are, everybody's upset. Except I know where they are. Or I think I know. They're where they're not supposed to be. Up in the old mine tunnels looking for gold that's not there but everyone thinks it is. There is no gold in these mountains, but nobody believes it. Anyway, I tell no one, and take my cousin's motorcycle and come up here. I find their motorcycles where they always leave them. It starts to rain. I start to look. Eventually I find what I think are footprints. I follow them. It gets later. I'm wet and cold. Then, all of sudden, boom! Bright lights from the sky and in come these helicopters. Men jump out with guns. They want to know about the president of the United States. I say, 'I understand he's a nice man.' They say, 'What else do you know?' I say that I saw on the news he was taken away from Madrid in the middle of the night because of some terrorist threat. Next thing I know here I am and luckily I find Amado and Hector safe."

"You were with the president, out there on the mountain," Bill Strait said flatly.

"The president of the United States is out there on the mountain?"

"Where is he?"

"I came up here after Amado and Hector."

"What were you doing with a Mylar blanket?" Strait's manner was like ice, his questioning increasingly accusatory.

"I'm going into the mountains alone in the cold and rain and dark. I'm going to take something to help protect me. It's all I had."

"The protection you were looking for was from satellite surveillance."

Miguel laughed. "I'm running around in the dark and you've got a satellite looking for me? Thanks very much. I appreciate the help."

"Where is the president?" Strait pushed hard. "Who else was with him?"

"I said I came up here after Amado and Hector."

"Where is he?" Strait was right in Miguel's face, his eyes like stone, his stare cutting him in half.

"The president?"

"Yes."

"You mean now?"

"Yes, now."

Miguel suddenly stopped his banter and looked Bill Strait in the eye. "I have absolutely no idea."

140

• 3:30 A.M.

They sat on the flat of a rock-strewn trail at the bottom of the chute. They were shaking, breathless, scraped, bloodied, torn, wasted. But they'd made it. Each man accounted for. Each had said something to make sure he still had a grip on his senses. Each was enormously thankful to have made it down alive.

Far above they could see the helos still moving back and forth, playing their searchlights over the high pinnacles and the conifer forest below them. It meant that, for the moment at least, no one had found their trail or the drop into hell they had used for their escape.

The president took a deep breath and looked to José. "You are a very special person," he said in Spanish. "I thank you for myself and for all of us. I would like to call you my friend." He reached out and extended his hand.

José hesitated for the briefest moment, then looked to the others and back at the president. A shy, proud smile crept over his face as he reached out to take the president's hand.

"Gracias, sir. Usted es mi amigo," he looked to the others and nodded. "You es todos mis amigos." Thank you, sir. You are my friend. You are all my friends.

Abruptly the president stood. "Where do we go now?"

"There," José stood, nodding toward a narrow path leading through a rocky canyon. Just then the clouds parted enough for the moon to appear, lighting the entire area-from the deep canyon floor where they were to the pinnacles and mountaintops far above-like a silver moonscape. They could see the chute clearly, how deathly steep and narrow it really was and how far they had come down it. At any other time the idea of a grown man, let alone four, sliding down it out of his own choosing would have been insane if not suicidal, but this was hardly any other time.

The president looked to José. "Vámonos," he said. Let's go.

José nodded and led them off quickly toward the canyon.

141

• 5:20 A.M.

Nicholas Marten stood in the open doorway of a tiny tin-roof and stone outbuilding on the edge of the Aragon vineyard, a structure Hap had remembered from his walk-through of the resort site a month earlier when the Secret Service had been preparing for the president's visit. Mylar blanket finally taken off, Hap's Sig Sauer automatic stuck in his belt, he was eating a handful of dried dates they'd found in a bag on the shelf when they arrived, and looking up at the sky. The weather was clear now, the moon just dipping behind the high peaks to the west. In another hour the horizon would begin to pale. In two it would be fully light. Sunup would come a half hour later.

Marten stood there a moment longer trying to visualize the steep zigzag trail they had come down after they'd left the base of the chute. So far he had seen nothing of the helicopters nor anything else to suggest that their tracks had been found and that their trail was being followed. With luck, Marine Corps Major George Herman "Woody" Woods and the other helo pilots were still confining their search to the mountains and would continue to do so until well after daybreak. What they did afterward would be of little consequence, because by then, if things worked the way Hap had outlined, they would have breached the Aragon resort's massive security force, and the president would long since have arrived at the church on the hill and given the speech of his life to the highly prestigious members of the New World Institute.

• 5:23 A.M.

Marten turned and went back inside. José was curled up asleep on the floor just inside the door. A few feet to his left, Hap slept the sleep of the dead, the Steyr machine pistol in the crook of his arm. Safely back from the doorway on Hap's far side, President Harris slept too.

Marten slid the Sig Sauer from his belt and sat down in the doorway. They had reached the outbuilding just before 4:30. Five minutes afterward Hap had determined that the area was secure. It was then they found a watering hose tethered to a wall outside the building and the bag of dates inside, and all four ate and drank. Almost immediately extreme weariness began to overtake them and Marten volunteered first watch. At 5:45 he was to wake Hap and then have some forty-odd minutes of sleep himself before they were up and moving at 6:30, hoping to cover the three-quarters of a mile across the vineyards and up the hill, to where the resort's maintenance buildings were, just before daybreak.

Hoping.

So far they had encountered no resistance. The reason, Hap said, was the time of day and the remoteness of the area, and that they had yet to approach the resort's security perimeter that was nearly a mile farther in-a gravel work road that cut the vineyard almost in half, with the inward side bordering the resort itself. That work road was where the first lines of security would be set up, lines that would ease out to encircle the entire Aragon complex, the size of which was staggering-the vineyards, the eighteen hole golf course, parking areas, tennis courts, forested walking trails, the eighteen resort buildings and bungalows, and finally their goal, the ancient church on the hill behind it.

The security force numbered five hundred and was made up of local and state police and controlled, as the president had guessed, by the Spanish Secret Service. If the president had been going to speak as originally planned Hap would have supplemented that force with an additional one hundred U.S. Secret Service agents. But that plan was abandoned after what had "officially" taken place in Madrid and the president was removed to the famous "undisclosed location." That the president would not be attending the Aragon sunrise service was something Hap knew had been transmitted formally to the New World Institute's hierarchy by White House Chief of Staff Tom Curran from the U.S. embassy in Madrid. It was just that situation Hap was counting on because he knew security would stand down to a lesser level of alert and was why he had taken the approach he had.

The vineyards at this time of year and particularly on an early Sunday morning would have at best a skeleton crew, if even that. The maintenance-building complex housed not only the vineyard, golf course and groundskeeping equipment and supplies, but also the resort's sizable laundry where, among other things, employee uniforms were laundered and stored. Reaching those maintenance buildings safely and unseen became the first step in his plan. Far more difficult would be getting the president the next mile and a half, up the long forested hill behind the resort to the four-hundred-year-old church where the New World sunrise service was to be held.

If Marten marveled at Hap's inventory of logistical particulars, he shouldn't have. It was part of the job, what the Secret Service did before a presidential visit anywhere. He just hoped Hap's memory was as good as he thought it was and that in the meantime no new and unknown security measures had been implemented by the Spanish forces.

142

• 5:40 A.M.

Five minutes more until Marten woke Hap. He knew that in his state of exhaustion, if he wasn't careful he would fall asleep where he was and if he did they all might sleep for days. Instead, he played mind games with himself; thinking of his work as a landscape architect at Fitzsimmons and Justice in Manchester and of the very pressing and yet unfinished Banfield project. Of Demi; where she was now, what her real motivation had been for delivering himself and the president to Merriman Foxx at Montserrat. Whatever it had been, one thing was certain: she could have had no idea at all about what was really going on, with Foxx, with his experiments, with any of the president's enemies. He had last seen her in the company of Foxx and Beck and Luciana at the monastery restaurant, but when he and the president had returned, Foxx had been alone. It meant she had gone somewhere with the others. But where and for what reason? All he could think was she had told the truth about her sister, and that finding her, or at least learning what had happened to her, was the most important thing in her life.

• 5:44 A.M.

"Cousin."

Marten started and looked up. The president stood before him, his bearded face more gaunt and drawn than ever.

"I know Hap was going to take second watch," he said quietly. "He's pretty banged up; let him sleep. Go get some yourself."

"You sure?"

"I'm sure."

"Want this?" Marten held up the Sig Sauer.

"Yes."

Marten handed it to him. "Thanks."

The president smiled, "You're wasting your precious forty winks."

"Don't fall back asleep."

"Can't. I've got a speech to practice."

143

• 6:30 A.M.

It was barely light enough to see when the president returned the Sig Sauer to Marten and the four left the outbuilding, starting up a long sloping hill, muddy from the rain, and lined with rows of just-budding grapevines. Marten first, then the president, then Hap, then José.

Moments earlier the president had thanked José for his courage and daring, and then told him he should turn back and go home before things got worse. But the teenager had refused, saying he wanted to stay, to be of any help that he could. Keeping José with them was something Hap wanted too. The youngster was not only a local who could speak easily to any worker they might come upon, but there was something else: if he went home Bill Strait would have the Secret Service, the CIA, or the Spanish police waiting for him, his presence in the shafts learned from Amado or Hector or both, his name and address taken. If they got him and he knew where the president was, it wouldn't be long before he told them everything, and in a blink the mountain teams would show up in full force, and that was something they couldn't have happen.

• 6:35 A.M.

Marten neared the crest of the hill, then suddenly stopped and dropped to one knee, motioning for the others to do the same. The maintenance buildings were just ahead. Four of them, large wooden barnlike structures built around a central courtyard. Immediately to their right and just beyond three rows of budding grape canes was the gravel work road that cut the vineyard in half and where the initial lines of security would be set up.

"What is it?" the president whispered.

"Listen." Marten had his head up and was looking toward the buildings.

"What?" Hap slid in beside them.

"Down," Marten motioned them flat on the ground.

Seconds later two uniformed policemen on motorcycles passed by, their eyes scanning the vineyards on either side, heading slowly back down the road behind them.

Marten looked to Hap, "Think there are more?"

"Don't know."

"I'll find out," José said to the president in Spanish.

Before they could stop him he was up and running toward the quadrangle of buildings. Then he disappeared from sight.

• 6:43 A.M.

"No one else," José said in Spanish as he came back to kneel beside them. "Come quickly."

In no time he was leading them past the grape canes and onto the gravel road. Then they ran, moving like shadows toward the buildings in pale light. Fifty yards, thirty. Then twenty, ten, and they were there. José opened a side door and they went inside.

• 6:46 A.M.

The room was huge, the central garage for the resort's rolling stock. There were four pick-up trucks; four full size tractors; six small flat-bedded three-wheel trucks; four large golf-course mowers, and four open electric-powered service carts, parked nose to tail in a line. Backed up against a closed sliding door at the rear was a dust-covered faded green Toyota van that looked like it hadn't been driven for months.

"Watch the door," Hap said, and went to the line of carts, hoping to find one with keys in the ignition.

"Here," Marten had opened a cabinet beside an office door. Inside, arranged neatly on pegs, were the keys to each vehicle. It took three full minutes before they were sorted out and the key for the first cart in line was found. Immediately Hap got in and tried it. The engine light glowed green, indicating a full electric charge.

Thirty seconds later they were warily crossing toward the building that housed the laundry. The sky was much lighter now. The cover of darkness they'd relied on for so long had given way to a rapidly brightening day.

They left José at the door and entered the main laundry room. Three enormous open vatlike stainless-steel washers took up the center area, while a bank of stainless-steel dryers was positioned against a far wall. Opposite both was a large window that looked out to the other buildings. Just past it were the pressing machines, and beyond them, stainless-steel clothing racks that held rows of assorted Aragon Resort uniforms, most on hangers and arranged by size: a necessary convenience for the exclusive five-star resort that Hap knew had more than two hundred employees who had to be in clean, well-pressed uniforms at all times.

"Viene un hombre." A man is coming, José said from the doorway, then quickly ducked out of sight.

The president motioned to Hap and Marten, and the three slipped out of sight behind the pressing machines. Hap took a breath and slid out the Steyr machine pistol. Marten raised the Sig Sauer.

A moment later a large curly-haired man in white pants and a white T-shirt came in. He flicked on the overhead lights, then went to a control panel and pressed a series of buttons. Almost immediately the washing machines began to fill with water. The man adjusted a temperature gauge, then walked to the washers and looked in. Satisfied, he turned and left.

Hap waited a half beat then crossed the room, pressing up against the big window to look out. He saw the laundryman walk to a far building and go inside, closing the door behind him. Immediately Hap turned to the others.

"He'll be back soon enough. We need to move and fast."

144

• 7:00 A.M.

Dr. James Marshall watched Captain Diaz and one of Bill Strait's Spanish-speaking Secret Service agents interrogating Miguel in an isolated area near the rear of the command post. The questions went from Spanish to English back to Spanish, then to English again. Handcuffed and more than a little nervous, CNP guards standing coldly alongside, Hector and Amado sat on folding chairs only feet away, deliberately made party to Miguel's grilling. If Miguel didn't break they were betting one of the boys would.

Abruptly Marshall turned and went to Bill Strait. "He's not telling them anything."

"He will, or one of the kids will tell us more, but it'll take time so I wouldn't count on a sudden revelation."

Marshall was tired and angry and frustrated. He was also becoming increasingly anxious and didn't like it. It made him feel like Jake Lowe. "We've got a Spanish limousine driver with an Australian accent and two local teenagers. Then we've got a guy who looks like Hap, or maybe is Hap, someplace out there with the president and this Nicholas Marten. We've got every piece of hi-tech equipment and an army of bodies and aircraft flying around and now we've got daylight, and still nobody can find them. Why?"

"Maybe it's because they're still somewhere in the tunnels," Strait said. "Or because they're not here at all."

"What the hell does that mean?"

Strait turned and walked over to a map of the area. "This," he said, sweeping a hand over the mountaintops, "is where we've been looking. Over here," he moved his hand far to the right, "is the Aragon Resort, where the president was originally to speak this morning."

Marshall perked. "You think that's where he's going?"

"I don't know. What I do know is we haven't found him here. We know he was in the tunnels, and Hap or no Hap, if he somehow got out and into these mountains…" Strait hesitated, then went on. "I can't get inside his head except to think that the resort is a place to go that's real and that he knows about and where there are very important people he can talk to, a number of whom he knows. How he'd do it, I don't know. I'm just thinking out loud."

Marshall turned and walked back to Captain Diaz to pull her away from Miguel and the boys. "Would it be possible," he asked, "for the president to somehow get off these mountains and to the Aragon Resort?"

"Avoiding satellite detection?"

"What if he had a Mylar blanket like the limo driver? What if those were the things we saw in the water in the helicopter images. The president, Hap Daniels, Marten, and the driver."

"Then you're suggesting he went the rest of the way by foot, overland, and in the rain and dark."

"Yes."

Captain Diaz smiled. "It's not likely at all."

"Is-it-possible?" Marshall enunciated coldly.

"If he was crazy and if he had some idea of how to get there. I would say yes, I guess it's possible."

145

• 7:03 A.M.

They were dressed as groundskeepers. Dark green shirts with lighter green pants. The classic logo of The Resort at Aragon stitched in white italics over the left breast pocket, their old clothes hidden in a trash container near the back of the maintenance building where the rolling stock was. Of the four, only the president kept one personal item with him and it was tucked safely inside his shirt. It was the one thing he had kept all along and what he would wear when he addressed the New World Institute delegation. The thing that, despite his workman's uniform and growth of beard, would make him instantly recognizable to everyone there. His toupee.

José stood at the door, peering out. Marten eased the electric cart up to it and stopped. The president sat beside him, Hap in back, machine pistol in hand, along with a contingent of necessary props-rakes, brooms, plastic trash cans, and something else Hap had picked up simply because he felt it might come in handy later: a pair of binoculars, lifted from the top of what appeared to be a supervisor's desk.

"Any sign of him yet?" the president asked in Spanish.

José shook his head, then-"Sí," he said suddenly, and looked back. "The man in white just went back into the laundry," he said in Spanish and the president translated.

"Let's go," Hap said.

José slid the front door open, Marten eased the cart out and waited for José to close it again. Ten seconds later he jumped into the cart alongside Hap, and then they were going, moving silently past the buildings and turning onto the gravel road that would take them down behind the golf course and then up a winding mile-and-a-half-long service road through deep woods to the church.

• 7:12 A.M.

They crested a hill and stopped under the cover of a large conifer. For the first time they could see past the vineyards to the golf course and the resort itself. In front of the elegant white-stuccoed main building were seven unmarked highly polished jet-black tour buses with heavily tinted windows. The buses that had picked up the New World group from the airport in Barcelona Friday and that would take them back at the close of the sunrise service this morning.

Nearby were a dozen large black SUVs, Spanish Secret Service vehicles that would escort them to the church and then to the airport. Farther out they could see a major force of police vehicles blocking the main road in from the highway. More were stationed every quarter mile or so along the work road that bisected the vineyard. Everything in place, as Hap knew it would be.

High above the resort itself and at the top of a long curving blacktop road, they could just make out the ancient stone and red-tile roof of the Romanesque structure that was La Iglesia de Santa Maria, the Church of Saint Mary.

"That it?" the president asked.

"Yes, sir," Hap said.

The president let out a breath. They were that close.

146

• 7:17 A.M.

The service road took them around the far edges of the golf course and then abruptly down into a wooded glade, then steeply up again, winding through thick conifers toward the church. Marten was just starting a turn and thinking about what they would do when they reached the rear of the church and the service entrance where they were headed when Hap suddenly intruded. He was looking uphill through the binoculars.

"Patrol vehicle coming down. Get off the road," he snapped.

Marten drove another dozen yards, then abruptly turned the cart off the road and through some trees to stop behind a low rock wall.

Hap lifted the machine pistol, Marten slid out the Sig Sauer and then they sat back and watched a four-wheel-drive police car come down the hill. It slowed as it approached, then slowed even more. They could see four uniformed men inside, all looking in the direction where they were hidden.

"Nothing here, nothing here, keep going," Marten breathed.

The car slowed even more, and for the briefest moment they were certain it was going to stop. But it didn't, the driver just rolled it slowly on past and kept on.

"Good boys," Marten said.

"Give them a minute to clear," Hap put down the machine pistol and picked up the binoculars, then turned to follow the police vehicle as it drove slowly down the hill.

"This is fill," the president said abruptly and out of the blue looking at the land around them. "This dirt, this soil base. I've been watching it all along. The further up the road we get, the more obvious it becomes. It's all landfill. Look around, most of these trees are young. Fifteen, twenty years old at most."

"Mr. President," Hap was still looking through the glasses, "the resort is barely twenty years old. They probably graded everything and replanted."

"Except for one thing. The church. How do you put a four-hundred-year-old church on twenty-year-old landfill?"

"Number the stones, then tear it down and rebuild it as it was," Marten said.

"But why? And where was it before?"

"Uh-oh," Hap said abruptly.

"What is it?" The president turned to follow his gaze.

"More security."

A second police SUV had come up the road from below, and the car going down was stopped next to it, their drivers chatting.

"What do we do now?" the president asked.

"Nothing. We try to leave, they'll see us."

"You mean we stay here?"

"Yes, sir. We stay here."

147

• 7:25 A.M.

Four black-robed monks brought Demi from her cell and walked her down a long, barren, and dimly lit hallway. She wore only sandals and the scarlet dress Cristina had brought for her to wear during the ritual ceremonies the night before. That she had been forced to strip naked and put the dress on in front of the monks meant nothing.

How could it? They had come to take her to her death.

• 7:28 A.M.

The first monk slipped a security card through an electronic reader beside a steel door. The door slid open and they entered another long corridor. To both left and right doors stood open to what looked like physicians' examination rooms. They were small, identical, and had opaque glass boxes mounted on the walls, the kind used for reading X-rays and prints of scans. A stainless-steel examination table stood coldly in the center of each.

• 7:29 A.M.

They passed through another security door and entered a room filled with stainless-steel bunks, the same as the one in the cell she had just occupied. The only difference was that here they were stacked four high to the ceiling on either side of a center aisle and stretched to the far end of the chamber. Enough to easily accommodate two hundred people at a time.

Another corridor and she saw communal toilets and showers. Just past them was what looked like a small commercial kitchen and beyond it an area of stainless-steel tables with attached benches that might have been used for dining. These rooms, like the rooms and corridors she'd seen before it, were empty, as if the entire area had been a beehive of activity that had quickly and purposely been abandoned.

• 7:31 A.M.

The monks brought her through a series of five heavy security doors, one less than ten feet from the other. Then they entered a long, darkened subwaylike tunnel with a single monorail track running down its center. In front of them was a large, sledlike conveyance, completely open save for three rows of bench seats. Four more monks sat shoulder to shoulder on the rearmost bench. In front of them another monk sat alongside-Demi caught her breath as she saw her.

Cristina.

She wore the white gown of the night before and smiled pleasantly, even happily, when she saw Demi.

Immediately Demi was seated next to her. As quickly one of the monks slid in beside her. The remaining monks took the seats directly in front of them. Nine monks to escort two women into eternity.

Abruptly the sled moved off, quickly and silently picking up speed. A second passed, and then two, and then Cristina turned to Demi and smiled the most horrifying smile she had ever seen. Horrifying because it was so warm and genuine and childlike.

"We are going to join the ox," she said excitedly, as if they were about to go on some wonderful adventure.

"We mustn't," Demi whispered. "We have to find a way not to go."

"No!" Cristina suddenly pulled back, and her eyes shone with a terrible and immeasurable darkness. "We must go. Both of us. It has been written in the heavens since the beginning of time."

The sled began to slow and Demi saw they were approaching the end of the tunnel. Seconds later the sled stopped. The monks stood together and led both women onto a platform beside it. Immediately a large door slid open and they were taken into a large room. In the center of it was what appeared to be an oversized commercial furnace.

Demi felt the breath go out of her as she realized what it was-a steel-faced brick retort oven. The room was a crematory. The place where it all ended.

"The ox waits by the fire," Cristina smiled, and then four of the monks led her away.

A moment later the remaining monks took Demi into another room. A woman turned as they entered. It was Luciana. She was dressed in a long black clerical robe, her black hair the same tight bun as the night before, her dark eye makeup accentuated by the same theatrical streaks that ran like daggers from the corners of her eyes to the hollows of her ears, the same hideously long nails once again fixed to the ends of her fingers.

"Sit down," Luciana indicated a lone chair in the center of the room.

"Why?"

"So that I may do your hair and makeup."

"My hair and makeup?" Demi was incredulous.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"You must be beautiful."

"To die?"

Luciana smiled cruelly. "It is a requirement of the tradition."

148

• 7:48 A.M.

The Sig Sauer in his lap, Marten drove the last quarter mile cautiously, the gravel road twisting in a large S through a thick stand of conifers. Through them they could just see the church and the small wooded parking lot that served its rear entrance. Hap glanced behind them. There was nothing. They'd had to wait an extraordinarily long time for the police vehicles to leave the area below. When finally they had and Hap gave Marten the okay and then they'd started up again, he'd still kept a close watch behind. The police might have gone but this road was clearly their assignment which meant they could, and probably would, return at any time.

The first rays of the morning sun touched the mountain peaks behind them as Marten pulled into the parking lot and stopped beside three church vans.

"Those should be church staff getting ready for the service," Hap said of the vans. "They'll be inside and upstairs in the main part of the church." He glanced around quickly, then gave the okay, and the four got out of the cart, looking for all the world as if they belonged there, taking the rakes and brooms and trash cans and setting them near the rear entry door as if preparing for work.

The elevation here was higher than at the church's main entrance in the front and gave them a view of the large central parking area and the long curving road leading up to it from the rolling sprawl of the resort and vineyards below.

"Keep an eye on the door," Hap said to Marten, then took the binoculars and walked up a small hill to squat next to a large tree. Through the glasses he could see the force of uniformed police and police vehicles guarding the surrounding roads. A pan to the main parking lot and he could see the Spanish Secret Service SUVs taking positions in front of and behind the sleek black buses and the line of New World delegates boarding them. He wrinkled his forehead in puzzlement and looked back to the others.

"The people getting on the buses are dressed in evening clothes. All of them, men and women."

"What?" The president moved in, Hap handed him the glasses, and he looked through them. "Formal evening clothes for a nondenominational sunrise service? Was this brought up to you in the briefing?"

"No," Hap said.

The president shook his head, "I don't get it."

"Neither do I."

• 7:50 A.M.

They left José outside to serve as a lookout, clearing leaves from a flower bed and guardedly entered the church through the rear door.

Hap led them down a narrow limestone hallway. To their right was a meeting room of some kind and past it another stairway leading up that the president would take to reach the church proper. Twenty feet more and Hap turned them left and down a stone stairway that led to a basement storage area where he felt it was safe for them to wait until the service began.

Partway down, the staircase made a large semicircular turn as if it were circumventing a turret or something large and rounded on the far side of the wall. It was curious architecture for a church building as old as this one, reconstructed or not. Even the president mentioned it.

"There shouldn't be round walls inside an essentially rectangular building, not one like this," he said, almost eerily.

"Whatever it is, it's not noted on the blueprints the resort management gave us. The Spanish Secret Service made no reference to it either," Hap said.

The president studied it again and then let it pass as they reached the bottom of the staircase and started along a hallway with doors open to rooms on both left and right and one closed with a "W/C" on the door, water closet or restroom.

"Meeting and classrooms, restroom," Hap said, then abruptly stopped at a closed door and opened it. "In here," he said, and flicked on a wall switch. The room filled with light, and they entered the small storage room he had promised. Cleaning materials and paper supplies filled shelves on either side. Everyday tools-hammers, wrenches, pliers, tin snips, screwdrivers, hand drills, plug-in work lights and several well-used flashlights-were mounted neatly on a rack above a workbench near the rear. A far corner was stacked with a dozen cardboard boxes labeled Biblias Santas. Holy Bibles.

Hap closed the door and looked at his watch. "It's seven fifty-six," he said, looking to the president. "I have no way to know if your friend Rabbi Aznar is still scheduled to be part of the service, but whoever is giving the convocation, it should begin about ten after eight. The Spanish Secret Service will sweep it before people come in. I don't want us going up there blindly and having to wait in the hallway before everyone is seated and the doors are closed. We might convince the Spaniards but most likely not, especially if their orders came from Madrid. They'd think what they all think, they're doing the right thing by hustling you out of here. So to wait up there is too dangerous. The Spaniards will stand down to a degree once the convocation begins. That's when we go up."

"How are we going to know when that is? We can't post someone up there, not even José."

"At the end of the hallway is the church's video room. In it are monitors for twenty automated security cameras mounted throughout the upper church and in the parking lot outside that are fed to central security at the resort. Trouble is, the room is locked. But if I can get us in, we'll be able to see everything that's going on in the church proper and the area outside it. What worries me is that it could take time to get that door open, if I can get it open at all. Somebody comes along in the meantime, sees us and alerts security, this whole thing can turn real nasty in a hurry."

"Hap," the president pressed him, "somebody comes along, I'm the same as you two fellas and José outside," he half-smiled and pointed to the resort logo on his work shirt, "just some half-bald guy who works here."

• 7:58 A.M.

The door to the control room was fifty feet down the hallway from the storage room, made of steel and locked. On the wall next to it was an electronic keypad and a slot for a coded security card.

Marten stood lookout, his back against the wall, the Sig Sauer held at his side. Hap put his hand on the doorknob and turned it. Nothing happened.

"Most of these devices have a master override, a special code technicians use to get inside them. You just have to find it."

He punched a code into the keypad and tried the door again. Nothing. He tried a different code. Still nothing. He tried another series of numbers, and then another series still. And then another. Still nothing. Finally he shook his head and turned to the president. "It's not going to work, and we can't break the door down. We'll have to go back to the storeroom and judge the start of services as best we can."

"Cousin," Marten looked to the president. "When we got up here to the church I looked back the way we had come. You can see way out across the valley, past the maintenance buildings to the mountains where we were last night.

"I drew an imaginary line from the big door where the monorail ended in the tunnel to here. It went across the vineyards, through the maintenance buildings, and to the church here in a line about as straight as you can get. If Foxx had that tunnel dug at the same time this resort was built, he would have had to put the dirt somewhere. That tunnel is ten miles long inside the mountain itself; it's probably another eight or more miles over here if he brought it that far. Any way you look at it, it's a lot of dirt and rock. You said this soil was all fill, maybe that's where it came from."

"I don't understand."

"If I'm right, all of this, the labs, the monorail tunnel, this church, even the resort, is Foxx's work. His idea, his design, his construction, everything."

"What if it is?"

"He might have left keypads and entry codes for others, but why would he complicate things for himself and have a dozen electronic security keys when one would do?" He took Merriman Foxx's security card from his jacket, went to the door, and slid it through the slot next to the door, as he had done to get them into Foxx's experimentation labs under the monastery.

There was a distinct click. Marten turned the knob, and the door opened.

"It seems Dr. Foxx's interests were even more encompassing than we thought."

149

• 8:00 A.M.

The control room was carpeted, with bunkerlike concrete walls and painted a deep metallic gray. A lone hi-tech office chair sat before a control console above which a bank of twenty closed-circuit television monitors were mounted. To one side was what looked like a narrow panel built into the wall. It was made of steel and painted the same color as the room. What it was was a door; one with flush-set hinges, two inset locks, one above the other, and nothing else. What it was for or where it led, Hap didn't know. The only information he had came from the blueprints the resort management had given to the Secret Service. The room they were in had been designated as "video control room," the inset-panel door had been labeled "emergency access to electrical panels." Hap had been in the video room during his earlier security walk-through but had not asked that the door be unlocked and opened. Although as a potential hiding place for bombs or persons bent on doing harm to the president it would have been checked during the final Secret Service sweep of the grounds in the hours just prior to the president's arrival.

"What would Foxx's interest in all this have been? The resort as some kind of ostentatious cover for his work?" the president asked as they turned their attention to the monitors.

"Don't know," Marten said, "I would have made no connection at all if you hadn't mentioned the composition of the hillside, and if I hadn't drawn my imaginary line, and if his card hadn't just opened this door."

"Here come the buses." Hap was staring at the monitors, where a line of the sleek black buses could be seen coming up the road from the resort. Other monitors picked up the Spanish Secret Service's black SUVs escorting them. Still others showed the inside of the church from a dozen or more angles.

One was focused on the central aisle just inside the main doors where a dozen black-robed monks waited. Another showed the altar. Another still the choir bays on either side of it. There was an angle on the pulpit. One on the door behind it and to the side, where the president planned to enter. Another showed a long empty corridor somewhere. Another yet gave a view of the chapel's seating area, where the seats were not rows of pews but rather more like a theater with stadium seating.

Another monitor revealed an area to the side of the altar where a door suddenly opened and another black-robed monk entered followed by two people in clerical robes.

"Reverend Beck," the president said in surprise as they saw the first person. Then the second person came into view, a woman.

"The witch Luciana," Marten said.

"Congressional chaplain Rufus Beck?" Hap was as surprised as the president.

"Señor?" There was a sudden pounding on the door. "Señor?"

"José," Marten said.

Machine pistol in hand, Hap stepped to the door and carefully opened it.

"I couldn't find you. Helicopters are coming," Jose was talking excitedly to the president in Spanish. "Out there," he pointed off, "from the mountains."

The president snapped a quick translation.

"Christ!" Hap blurted. "They figured it out. We've got to go, Mr. President, and now. We're caught in here, we're dead, all of us."

• 8:06 A.M.

They could hear the thudding chop of approaching helicopters as they came out. Hap first, cautiously, machine pistol ready. Then José, the president, and Marten with the Sig Sauer. Hap started them for the cart, then suddenly pulled them back behind the cover of one of the church vans. A police SUV was coming up the gravel work road toward them.

In the next moment the helicopters arrived. There were two of them and they were identical, painted dark green and white with the American flag just above the doors. They were United States Marine Squadron One, U.S. Marine helicopters that ferried the president and other ranking administration officials wherever they needed to go.

"Marine Two," Hap said in astonishment as the helos circled over the parking lot and then suddenly dropped down to land. Marine One was the designation when the president was aboard, Marine Two when it was the vice president.

"So much for your speech, Cousin," Marten said as the helos touched down and were instantly surrounded by shining black SUVs. Immediately the doors opened and the vice president's Secret Service detail got out. They waited for the helicopter engines to shut down, then the agents went directly to them. A half second later the doors were pulled back and those inside stepped out.

Vice President Hamilton Rogers. Secretary of Defense Terrence Langdon. Secretary of State David Chaplin. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, United States Air Force General Chester Keaton. Presidential Chief of Staff Tom Curran. And Evan Byrd. Of the group that had faced the president in Madrid only his chief political advisor, Jake Lowe and national security advisor, Dr. James Marshall, were missing.

"My God," the president breathed.

"Hap," Marten warned, nodding toward the grove of trees and the approaching police SUV.

Hap glanced at it, then back at the helos and the swarm of Secret Service agents surrounding the president's "friends."

"We're going back inside, now!" Hap took the president by the arm and rushed him toward the church door they had come out only seconds before.

150

• 8:10 A.M.

As if it were possible, the monks pulled Demi deeper into her nightmare.

The room was like a stage, semicircular and open to a darkened ceiling thirty feet or more above her. The walls reaching to it were polished steel. The floor, visible only moments before, was now knee-deep in swirling man-made fog illuminated from beneath by unseen lights in an ethereal combination of reds, greens, purples and ambers. In the center of it was a simple black throne where Cristina perched regally, her fall of magnificent black hair stark against her clinging white gown, the setting and the lighting making her the star attraction of whatever was to happen next. Clearly there was to be a show, and soon there would be an audience for it, one Demi clearly imagined would be made up of what Gia-como Gela had described as he told of the traditions-"an annual rite performed before several hundred members of a powerful order called the Unknowns."

Wordless, the monks took Demi toward the center of the stage, then stopped as slowly a great balled cross of Aldebaran rose up before them. Immediately the monks secured her feet to its base, then pulled a strap tight around her throat and lifted her arms outward, binding them to the crossbars. In seconds she had become a living crucifix fastened to a pagan icon.

Cristina looked over at her and smiled. "The ox waits."

"No."

"Yes."

At that moment a monk appeared through the fog and approached Cristina. He handed her a silver goblet filled with red wine. She took it, and smiled, and gently opened her mouth. As she did the monk laid a round wafer on her tongue. She lifted the goblet and drank, swallowing the wafer. This, Demi knew, was part of the ceremony. She also knew she had witnessed a false Eucharist. Christ and the Last Supper were not part of this rite. Nor was the wafer symbolic of his body nor the wine of his blood. The night before, the ox had stood calmly and peacefully as it was consumed by fire, no fear or pain in its eyes. Clearly it had been given some drug, and Demi was certain Cristina had been given one now. But she knew too that while the drugged beast had died peacefully, it had all been for show. For the children and the others to see and to believe Cristina would have that same peaceful journey. But it was a lie; she had seen the video of her mother's sacrificial death and knew what Cristina's death and hers would be like. Cristina might be drugged now, but the effect wouldn't last. Whoever these people were, their ritual centered on horrible, excruciating human death. She knew too that while Cristina's burning was the rite's centerpiece, it was she who was to be the very pointed political sideshow, her own torturous murder an example to any of the Unknowns who at some point might decide to rebel and turn against them.

There was something else as well: her clear memory of the video and how it had been presented to her. These people were not simply evil, they were profoundly cruel and vindictive. It was as if her heinous death were not enough; they had also to demonstrate their power, their oversight, their all-knowingness. Woe be to anyone in the afterlife who might be reborn and try again to challenge them.

Demi looked off, unable to bear more of her own thoughts. When she did, horror struck once more. As if from some medieval graveyard three more balled crosses rose from the fog. On each was mounted a severed human head.

151

• 8:15 A.M.

Their retreat back into the church left only one place to go: the secured video control room. A location both helpful and dangerous. It was secluded and they had locked it from inside but it also meant that if they were found, there would be no further escape. The president would be dead before nightfall and so would the rest of them.

"Maybe," the president sat down in the chair and studied the monitors, "what Foxx didn't tell us, they will."

Marten moved next to Hap to stand over the president's shoulder and watch. He marveled at the president's ability to compartmentalize and to turn sheer disadvantage into opportunity. For the most part the situation didn't seem to matter.

"José," the president turned to look at the teenager standing back against the door. He had come this far. Done everything that was asked and more. But now, locked in this room, he was clearly frightened. The presidential helicopters, the flock of Secret Service agents, the bank of high-tech monitors, everything was beyond him.

"It's alright," the president said gently in Spanish. "Come over here with us. You are a man. See what's going on. Maybe you can explain some-"

"The buses are here," Marten said, and the president turned back to the monitors. The string of black buses was seen arriving in the parking lot on five of the monitors. They stopped, the doors opened and the New World guests, resplendent in evening clothes, walked from them and toward the church entrance. They were smiling, pleasantly chatting among themselves, wholly comfortable in the presence of the heavy security.

"I never saw the full roster of the New World membership but I'll bet I know half those people, some of them well," the president was clearly and deeply troubled. "They represent some of the most powerful and influential institutions around the world. Do they have any idea what's going on? Or are they part of it?"

Just then the church bells began to ring. Curiously, it was not the joyous tolling usually associated with a call to worship but instead the chiming of the Westminster Quarters, the familiar sound heard from clock towers around the world to strike the hour.

"Why the Quarters?" the president asked. "It's not on the hour. Is there some significance here? What does it mean, if anything?"

"Mr. President, Marten," Hap cut in. "Monitor seven, middle row."

A parking-lot camera aimed down the road toward the main resort buildings picked up a distant line of helicopters coming in. There were four and then a fifth. The last, the U.S. Army Chinook.

"Who is it?" the president was intent on the screen.

"I'd guess Woody," Hap said, "with the CNP behind him. Probably Bill Strait in the Chinook with Dr. Marshall and Jake Lowe. We came up from Madrid in it. I didn't think things could get much worse, but suddenly they are."

• 8:16 A.M.

U.S. Marine Corps Major Woody, Woods set the U.S. Marine Corps attack helicopter down on the Aragon Resort's ninth fairway. Seconds later three CNP helicopters landed. And then the Chinook set down. Immediately its doors were pulled back. Bill Strait came out first, followed by Dr. James Marshall and then a dozen U.S. Secret Service agents. The second, third, and fourth helos were Spanish CNP, with Captain Diaz in the lead chopper; their assignment: search the area from the vineyard's work road to the outside edge of the vineyards while other Secret Service, CIA, and CNP ground and helicopter units worked the area between the vineyards and the mountains. The route they suspected the president and anyone with him might have used; a group that would include Nicholas Marten and Hap Daniels.

By the vice president's order, the area from the vineyard road to the resort and beyond, all the way to the church, was under the control of his Secret Service detail, the Spanish Secret Service, and the Spanish police already deployed. If the president was within that perimeter he would be found. The outer perimeters belonged to Bill Strait and Captain Diaz.

In between, the Chinook stood by, ready to take the president out.

152

• 8:24 A.M.

President Harris had watched his close friend Rabbi Aznar give a brief convocation before the assembled members of the New World Institute. Then he had shaken hands with Vice President Rogers and left the stage on the arm of Reverend Beck.

Less than thirty seconds later an exterior security camera picked him up as he was escorted out and into the parking lot by two of the monks. The Secret Service helped him into one of the black SUVs and he was driven away. Immediately afterward the monks went back inside, closing the doors behind them.

"What happened?" the president asked as the monitors suddenly lost their picture. Immediately he had his answer: a computerized listing began:

Access one: locked. Lock confirmed.

Access two: locked. Lock confirmed.

Access three: locked. Lock confirmed.

The access scroll continued: numbers four to ten.

Then came the last:

Lock confirmation completed.

"Those are the church doors, Mr. President," Hap said quietly. "There are ten in all. Door number ten is the one we came in through. What we have here is a 'no one gets in, no one gets out' situation. Someone comes down to check on these monitors, we're done."

"Cousin," Marten abruptly turned to the president. "If I was right about what Foxx had constructed, if this church was in his plan and he ran the monorail all the way here, then it's somewhere below us. If it is and we can get to it, we have a way out.

"I want to send José to look for it. If he runs into someone all he has to do is say he works in maintenance, it's his first day on the job, and he got stuck when the doors locked. He's just trying to find another way out. Would you ask him to do that please?"

Ten seconds later Hap let José out, telling him to knock three times when he came back.

• 8:30 A.M.

"Now what?" The president was staring at the monitors that had suddenly gone black once again. Now they came back on and were showing various angles of the same thing. All two hundred very distinguished members of the New World Institute had left their seats and were filing to a dozen different locations, each monitored in close-up. Vice President Rogers was first, then one by one the others followed. Each person stepped forward, gave his or her name, place and date of birth, then reached up and pressed his or her left thumb against a small steel box.

Immediately a reading was superimposed over the person's face:

Member 2702. DNA taken: DNA confirmed.

Member 4481. DNA taken: DNA confirmed.

Member 3636. DNA taken: DNA confirmed.

"Whatever the hell's going on, I can guarantee you this video feed is not going out to main security," Hap said, his eyes locked on the monitors.

The parade continued. Members' ages ranged from twenty-eight to eighty-three. Places of birth were equally diverse: Basel, Switzerland; Salinas, Brazil; New York, New York; Berlin, Germany; Yokohama, Japan; Ottawa, Canada; Marseilles, France; Tampico, Mexico; Antwerp, Belgium; Cambridge, England; Brisbane, Australia.

The moment each member completed their sign-in a monk stepped in with what appeared to be a sterile swab, cleaned the mechanism, then stepped back, having made it ready for the next person.

"Jesus Lord," the president's voice caught in his throat as a woman stepped before a camera.

"Jane Dee Baker," she said, then gave the place and date of her birth and stepped forward to give a sample of her DNA.

"Chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Intelligence and Counterterrorism." Marten felt the same chilling surprise.

"Democrat from Maine, Mike Parsons's subcommittee," the president finished. "The one Merriman Foxx testified before."

"It's why Mike's dead and his son is dead, and why Caroline is dead," Marten said with no emotion at all. "Mike found out what was going on, or some of it anyway."

"Something else," the president said. "Each person is using his left thumb for the DNA signature. From this angle we can't see it but I would bet next year's congressional budget that every last one of them is tattooed with the sign of the Aldebaran."

153

• 8:35 A.M.

The soft, melodic chant of the monks floated across the church as the New World delegates returned to their seats. In the next moment the lights dimmed, as if the place was a theater and a performance was about to begin. And then it did.

"Cristina!" Marten blurted as they saw the floor in front of the altar abruptly slide back and a darkened hydraulic stage with swirling fog and eerie theatrical lighting rise up from below like some bizarre Las Vegas extravaganza. Cristina sat majestically in the center of it on a nearly invisible throne, a bright spotlight illuminating her from above as if she were some sort of grand goddess. Now a second spotlight came on nearer the front of the stage. In its glow were three apparent stage-prop severed heads mounted atop Aldebaran crosses.

As if preprogrammed, the automated, remote cameras began to play over the congregation as they inched forward in their seats. This was clearly why they were here, what they had come for and it shone in their faces.

"This Cristina, who is she?" the president asked quietly, clearly and unemotionally trying to understand what was going on.

"She was with Beck and Merriman Foxx in Malta," Marten said.

Just then, and again as if the entire bank of remote cameras had been preprogrammed, one of them moved off to begin a slow pan across the fog and onto the three severed heads mounted atop the Aldebaran crosses.

"My God, Mr. President," Hap said in a voice barely above a whisper. "Those heads are real."

Abruptly ten of the twenty monitors went blank, then two seconds later picked up the visual as another camera moved closer, one by one, showing the heads in extreme close-up. An explanatory caption was superimposed directly beneath each.

The first was that of a man, bald and very old.

Caption: GIACOMO GELA. DIVULGED SECRETS OF" μ" PURPOSE SERVED. TERMINATED.

The second was the head of a woman. "Lorraine Stephenson," Marten breathed in horror and sheer disbelief.

Caption: LORRAINE STEPHENSON. PHYSICIAN. UNSTABLE. SUICIDE.

Then came the last.

"Oh Lord, no!" Marten cried out as he saw the familiar thickset face, the gray hair and trimmed gray beard. Stone-dead eyes staring out at nothing.

Caption: PETER FADDEN. JOURNALIST, WASHINGTON POST. DANGEROUS. TERMINATED.

The voices of the monks grew louder and they saw them file onto the stage through the fog. Heads bowed, their chant continuing, there were fifty of them at least, maybe more. Whatever they were singing was directed wholly at Cristina.

The president looked to Marten. "This is your 'Machiavelli Covenant,'" he said, his voice hushed and grave.

"Yes, I know," Marten rasped with anger. "Just as Demi described it. The only thing that seems changed from the sixteenth century is the technology. The elaborate sign-in process done by hand into a guarded journal with a bloody thumbprint placed alongside the personal signature has been traded for an electronic photograph and DNA sample. The participant's presence in the audience intercut with the video of the ceremony. Confirmation that you were here and took part in what happened. The formal dress is a charming addition. It means you were all too pleased to attend."

"I don't understand," Hap said, bewildered.

"These people are here to witness ritual murder."

"Murder?"

"They're going to kill the girl," the president said quietly.

"How?"

"I don't know."

"Why?" Hap was incredulous.

"This is a very exclusive organization, Hap," Marten's eyes shifted from Hap to the monitors and then back. "The rules of membership require not only wealth and power but complicity in murder so that none dares stray from the chief objective."

"Which is what?"

"The accumulation of even greater wealth and power."

"To dominate globally and in perpetuity, I think is a better way to put it," the president said, thinking out loud as he painstakingly studied each monitor in turn, putting together the people and activity he saw on the screens with what Marten had told him about the Covenant and what he had learned as a Rhodes scholar. "This is an international fraternity of widely diverse and highly influential people who routinely make far-reaching agreements with one another. A great many of them, I would imagine, clandestine. It's an order that may well have been in operation for close to five hundred years and as such would have been a major force in the making of history. A group who, for no greater good than their own benefit, positioned themselves to expand empires by surreptitiously underwriting wars, assassinations, political and religious movements, and even-knowing of Dr. Foxx's involvement here-genocides."

The president turned away from the monitors to look at Hap and Marten. "The idea of a single group being capable of things so huge and terrible and far-reaching and over so long a period, borders on the impossible if not the absurd. It's a statement I would wholly agree with if it weren't for the truth we see up there on those screens and the fact that these people, in particular the ones I know personally, are major global players in investment banking, insurance, law, transport, defense contracting, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, energy, media, and politics-the things every society on the planet depends on for its daily life. You could argue that a great many of them are direct competitors and in total opposition to one another, but taken as a group, in one way or another they control a major part of the world's commerce.

"What I would imagine this weekend has been about-the seminars, the golf and tennis, the dinners and cocktail parties-is how best to conduct business in the coming year. Primarily how to respond to what will happen after the Warsaw assassinations and then to the catastrophe in the Middle East that will take place once Merriman Foxx's plan is executed. The ritual about to be performed there on the stage will irrevocably bind them to whatever course of action has been agreed upon." He looked back at the screens. "It's one of those great conspiracy theories every political theorist, writer, movie executive, and man and woman in the street around the world would love to believe exists. Well, it does exist and probably has for a very long time. The proof is right there in front of us."

154

• 8:44 A.M.

The chant of the monks abruptly stopped and the church filled with silence. Fog swirled on the stage where Cristina sat enraptured, joyfully waiting for the moment the fire would come and her journey, like that of the ox, would begin.

Suddenly a figure moved past her through the fog like some Shakespearean character. Another spotlight shone, illuminating Reverend Beck dressed in clerical vestments. He crossed to the front of the stage and lifted a cordless microphone.

"Hamilton Rogers," he said, his eyes searching the audience, his voice resounding through the church's state-of-the-art speaker system. "Where are you, Mr. Vice President?"

• 8:45 A.M.

A great roar came from the crowd as five separate remote cameras picked up Vice President Hamilton Rogers getting up from his seat and moving to the aisle, where monks escorted him toward the stage. When he reached it, he bounded up to embrace Reverend Beck as if this were some kind of revival meeting.

"Hamilton Rogers," Beck said to the congregation. "The next president of the United States!"

Thunderous applause followed.

Beck and Rogers again embraced warmly, then turned, grasped hands, and lifted their arms to the crowd. Wave after wave of applause followed. The revival had suddenly become a political grandstand.

• 8:46 A.M.

Marten looked to the president. "If there was ever any question about their plans for you, there's none now."

"The thing is," the president said, "it's not just 'my friends' anymore. It's all of them. They all know what's going on. It shows how incredibly intertwined and indoctrinated they are. They're not ordinary human beings. They're another species altogether. One whose entire ideology is filled with unbridled arrogance."

• 8:47 A.M.

Hamilton Rogers motioned for silence. In seconds the applause stopped, Reverend Beck handed the microphone to the vice president, and Rogers stepped to the front of the stage. He looked to the congregation and began calling out names, recognizing new members. One by one they stood: a young CEO of a Taiwanese export company; a middle-aged woman who was a strong, left-of-center Central American politician; a fifty-two-year-old Australian investment banker; a sixty-seven-year-old Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist from California; a seventy-year-old famously conservative Italian media mogul; and then another and another. Thundering applause followed each. Politically left, right, or center, the affiliation didn't seem to matter.

And then Vice President Rogers called out the rest. These were not new members but "old friends," he said, "dear, dear friends, longtime members joining us up here for this momentous occasion.

"United States Congresswoman Jane Dee Baker. United States Secretary of State David Chaplin. Secretary of Defense Terrence Langdon. United States Air Force General and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chester Keaton. Presidential Chief of Staff Tom Curran. Presidential confidant Evan Byrd."

Again the church filled with ear-shattering applause. Applause that grew louder and louder as one by one the audience stood to proudly and patriotically salute those whom Rogers had designated.

155

• 8:53 A.M.

Marten whirled at the knock on the control-room door, the Sig Sauer coming up in his hand. Hap stepped in front of the president, swinging the machine pistol.

Hurriedly the knock came again. One, two, three.

"It's José," Marten said.

Hap nodded and Marten went to the door and cautiously opened it. José stood there alone. His eyes intense, his body wound tight. Marten let him in and then locked the door.

"What is it?" the president asked in Spanish.

"I went down into the church as far as I could," he said in Spanish. "Through the door there are big wide stairs and then a big steel door. Also an elevator, I think. But everything is locked. No one is there. If there is a tunnel further down we cannot get to it."

"Gracias, José, muchas gracias," the president said gratefully, then smiled. "Está bien, relájate." It's alright, relax.

Immediately the president looked to Marten and Hap and translated.

"All we can do is wait and hope no one comes," Hap nodded at the monitors. "I'm assuming that when the ceremony is over the hydraulic stage will come back down, the original floor will slide back into place, and the monks will unlock the doors. After that everyone will go out to the buses as if nothing has happened. That's when we move. Up the stairs and out the way we came in. We don't go then we're dead in the water because the minute the guests have cleared the area the Spanish Secret Service will sweep the building and then lock it up tight."

"What about Cristina?" Marten snapped. "They're going to kill her."

Hap stared at him. "There's nothing we can do about her without endangering the president. Understand that and put her out of your mind."

"I understand it. I don't like it."

"Neither do I. It's just the way it is."

Marten stared back, then finally relented. "We get out. Then what?" he said quietly. "Where do we go? There are five hundred men out there, most of them focused on this building and the people inside it."

"We go out," Hap said calmly, "get in the cart, go back to the place we hid coming up. Security should depart the area in less than an hour after everyone leaves. After that we take it from there."

"Hap, your people are still out there with the Spanish police. They don't find us on the mountain, they'll start this way-maybe they already have. They're not going home until they have the president."

"Marten, we can't stay here."

"Woody," the president looked at Hap.

"Woody?"

"We take the chance he's not corrupted. As soon as we're out and you have a clear signal, text-message him on his cell phone. Tell him where we are and to get the hell in here fast with his chopper. Just him and the helo, nobody else. People will be leaving. It's a Marine Corps helicopter, nobody will know what's going on. He touches down in the back parking lot where we left the cart. Thirty seconds, we're on it and out of here."

"Mr. President, even if it works, he flies in and picks us up, we don't know what he'll do afterward. He could fly us straight to the waiting CIA jet. He does that and there're twenty guys under orders to get you to wherever they're supposed to take you and what you or I say won't matter."

"Hap," the president took a deliberate breath, "at some point damn soon we're going to have to trust somebody. I like Major Woods for a lot of reasons and always have. What I've given you are orders."

"Yes, sir."

Suddenly Reverend Beck's voice boomed through the speakers. They turned to see the congressional chaplain on every monitor. Speaking into the cordless microphone, red, green, and amber light playing on him from below, he crossed the darkened stage in a trail of theatrical fog. Whatever he was saying was in a language none of them had ever heard. He spoke again, as if it was a line of verse in adoration of someone or something. The New World members responded like a chorus in the same language, the way the families had the night before in the amphitheater.

Beck spoke again, then stopped and extended his hand to Cristina, still spotlighted on the darkened stage. She smiled proudly as Beck spoke again. A second spotlight followed him as he turned from Cristina and addressed the congregation, his right hand circling the stage the way he had done in the amphitheater. It was a call that demanded response from the congregation, and they did, repeating in enthusiastic unison what he had said. Abruptly the light swung from Beck and onto Luciana, her sharply pulled-back hair and daggered eye makeup radiating the power and nightmare fear of witchcraft.

In her hand was the ruby wand, and she moved behind Cristina, using it to draw a circle in the air above her head. Then her eyes found the congregation, and she called out a phrase. Everything about her was controlling and certain. She called it out once again, then turned and crossed the stage, the remote cameras following her through the fog.

Now she was on a dozen monitors, her eyes frozen on something before her. Then a half dozen cameras showed what it was.

Demi. Her body bound to a massive Aldebaran cross. Her eyes frozen in terror said everything. She was a living creature on the threshold of certain and horrific death.

"My God!" Marten blurted in shock and disbelief.

Luciana stopped before her, and the monks' chant began anew. Their voices rose to a crescendo, then fell quickly, only to rise again. Luciana stared at Demi, her posture grand and filled with contempt. Then Demi's eyes rose to meet hers and she returned the stare, defying her, giving the witch nothing. Luciana smiled cruelly and turned to the crowd.

"She would betray us as these have!" she said suddenly in English, a sweep of the ruby wand pointed at the heads on the Aldebaran crosses. In the next instant she uttered three sharp, distinctive words in the language she had spoken before. Immediately blue-red flame burst through the fog from gas jets in the floor beneath the heads. As it did a great cry went up from the congregation.

The monitors showed people leaning forward in their seats, straining to see. In seconds the heads were on fire. A half minute later their skin blistered up like meat thrown on a barbecue.

Immediately Demi's face filled a half dozen monitor screens. She screamed and kept on screaming. Four other monitors showed Cristina looking at her in alarm, as if the drugs given her before had worn off and she realized what was happening. Suddenly her eyes went wide as two monks appeared from the fog and dark and strapped her quickly and tightly to the throne. As quickly they stepped back and disappeared from view. All the while other monitors focused on the burning heads. On Luciana and Beck. Followed in rapid succession by cuts on people in the congregation. Then the cameras moved in for close-ups of the newly introduced members of the institute.

A heartbeat later they cut to the vice president's "dear, dear friends"-Congresswoman Jane Dee Baker; Secretary of State David Chaplin; Secretary of Defense Terrence Langdon; chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Chester Keaton; Chief of Staff Tom Curran; and presidential confidant Evan Byrd.

The president had been right when he said they were of another species altogether. No one there was merely a participant in murder or witness to an execution. There was another level to it entirely. Like Romans at the Colosseum's ancient barbaric spectacles, they were there for the show because it gave them immense and untold pleasure.

"This is just the beginning," the president said, his voice cracking in horror. An unthinkable situation made ten thousand times worse because he knew there was absolutely nothing they could do about it.

"The women will burn next."

156

The hell they will. Neither one of them." Marten was already moving for the door.

Hap grabbed him just as he reached it and shoved him hard against the wall. "You try and help them, you expose the president. They know he's with you. They'll know he's in the building. I told you before, put it out of your mind. It's just the goddamn way it is."

"No! It's not the way it is. I'm not going to let those women be burned alive." Marten looked angrily at the president. "Tell him to let go of me! Tell him now!"

"The president doesn't have a vote here," Hap kept Marten pinned against the wall. "I have a sworn obligation to protect and maintain the continuation of the government, to protect the person who is president. No one in this room is going anywhere until I say so."

The chanting started again as the monks formed a large figure eight on the stage, then began what seemed like some carefully choreographed dance, circling first Cristina and then Demi and then repeating it, their song rising and falling in a ghostly, macabre timbre that was both emotionally powerful and wholly unnerving.

"Hap," the president said deliberately, "you know the layout of the building. The way up to the church proper, to the door behind the altar I was going to use to make my entrance. How long would it take Marten to get to that door from here?"

"Without trouble, I'd guess about forty seconds. Why?"

"The electrical panels are in there." The president indicated the locked narrow door in the wall next to them. "We give Marten those forty seconds, then shut off the power. Maybe a few emergency lights will come on, but except for the brightness of the flame from the gas jets the whole place basically goes dark. There were flashlights near a workbench in the storeroom we were first in. Marten goes there, takes two of them, puts one in his belt, uses the other to light his way to the altar door. When he gets there he goes through it and walks calmly onto the stage, flashlight in hand. He's still in his groundskeeper's uniform. It's dark. Nobody knows what's going on. He shines the light around like he's a maintenance man there to fix the problem. Then sets it on the stage, the light still on, drawing attention. Somebody questions him, he doesn't reply. He calmly walks around behind the women as if he's looking to repair something, then cuts them free, takes them back through the altar door, and uses the other flashlight to get back down the stairs to the corridor near the door where we came in. We're already there waiting and all of us go out it. The time from when Marten leaves to when we leave the building shouldn't be more than four, five minutes. Six at most."

"Cousin," Marten said, "all the doors to the outside are electronically locked."

"My guess is the minute the power is cut the door locks release. They wouldn't chance trapping all these VIPs during a power loss. If the fire brigade had to break in to free them, their whole game could be revealed." He looked to Hap. "You agree?"

"Mr. President. Just damn forget it!"

"Do you agree, Hap?" The president pressed him firmly.

"About the locks, yes. Not the rest of it, not for a second."

The president ignored his protest. "It'll be a shock when they realize the women are gone. The whole place will erupt, but it'll take more than a few minutes to figure out what happened. By then we're out, either in the cart and gone back down the hill or out of sight because Woody's coming in with the chopper."

"Mr. President, we just can't risk-"

"Hap, we have one shot," the president was still pushing and hard. It was the way he did things when he believed in something but still valued someone else's opinion. If it could be done, say so. If it couldn't, say that too. "Can Marten do it?"

"The sudden blackout. The surprise. The quick in and out. With a team, maybe. But for one man alone whose only knowledge of the target area is from the monitors and he's trying to work fast and in the dark… and not just any one man-the minute Marten steps into the light of those gas jets Beck is going to recognize him. Those monks rush him and suddenly he's in a one-man war and they know you're somewhere here. It's a helluva risk, Mr. President, an easy ninety-nine-to-one against."

"Marten and I were alone in the dark in the tunnels. We took a helluva risk there too and nobody was giving any odds at all. Hap, the power is off, the doors unlock, it lets us choose the time when we move and go out. All of us, the women included."

Hap glanced at Marten, then took a breath and relented. "Okay," he said, "okay," then ran a hand through his hair and turned away. His concession hadn't been because of the women or the force of the president's personality but because of the situation. He had given in for the same reason he had when the president had demanded that they alert Woody and order him to fly in for an air rescue: opportunity.

The president had been right when he said at some point "damn soon" they were going to have to trust somebody and despite his concern about trusting anyone, if he had to choose someone here and now it would be Woody, if for no other reason than his flying skills. He could come in over those treetops, set the chopper down in that small parking lot behind the church and get them the hell out of there faster and more safely than anyone he knew. In the worst-case scenario afterward, if he tried to fly them to the CIA jet, both Hap and Marten were armed and could force him to set the aircraft down wherever they chose.

The situation here was more immediate. One way or another they would soon be trying to get out to that parking lot and text-messaging Woody for rescue. By cutting the building's power, which he agreed would most probably release the electronic door locks, it would let them set their own timetable for when they would go out instead of having to wait for the ceremony to end and be at the mercy of whatever else might happen then.

Added to that was the fact that Marten's attempt to rescue the women would cause a major disruption in the church. Whatever Marten did when he went in would happen fast and mostly in the dark. Because of it the vice president, Beck, Luciana, the monks, everyone, would be taken wholly by surprise. Maybe Marten and the women would escape, maybe not, but either way confusion would rule. It was just that upheaval that Hap saw as giving him the best opportunity yet to get the president out alive.

"Me." Abruptly José stepped forward. He looked at the president and spoke in Spanish, "I understand a little of what you are saying. I will go with Mr. Marten. Together we will be Hap's 'team.' "

The president stared at him, then smiled. "Gracias," he said and quickly translated.

"What the hell is he going to do but get in the way?" Hap said.

"Be a diversion," Marten said quickly. "He's Spanish. He's dressed in a maintenance uniform. He becomes the front guy out there on the stage with a flashlight. Somebody asks him a question, he answers something like the power went out and he was told to see if he could fix it." Marten paused. "It gives me time, Hap. Thirty seconds, a minute when everyone's looking at him and I'm on the back part of the stage going for the women."

"Right," Hap agreed. It was one more card for them to play in the darkened church, giving them that much more of a complication and that much more of a chance to get the president out.

Immediately the president nodded toward the locked narrow door in the wall. "Open that up and let's look at the electrical panels. Shoot the locks off-there's no time for anything else."

Marten slid the Sig Sauer from his belt, then took off his shirt and wrapped it around the muzzle for a makeshift silencer.

At the same moment the chant of the monks rose. It was strong and deliberate and powerful, as if the immediate precursor to some event. Suddenly a wall of blue-red flame erupted through the fog. A great cry went up from the congregation as, in an instant, the flame encircled first Demi and then Cristina.

"Oh God, no!" the president breathed, his eyes locked on the monitors.

They saw Demi on a dozen screens as she fought wildly against the bonds that held her firmly to the Aldebaran cross but her struggle was impossible and she knew it. Wide-eyed in terror, she stared at the flames surrounding her then looked to Cristina.

"The ox was a lie!" she yelled. "A trick! You were betrayed! Your family was betrayed! All the families through the centuries have been betrayed! You thought this was part of a deep sacred religion! It is!" Her eyes shifted to congregation. "But it's theirs, not yours!"

They saw Luciana smile jubilantly, then step to the front of the stage and, like the grand actress she was, throw her arms wide to the congregation and call out something in their ritual tongue. En masse they repeated it. Again she spoke, her eyes luminous, her phrasing distinct and powerful, as if she were calling forth ancient gods. Then without warning she drew her arms around her and stepped back, vanishing into the fog.

Seconds later an apparition in a hooded black robe appeared from the very same spot. It crossed to the front of the stage and raised its head.

Beck.

Slowly he raised his arms to the gathering, and in his great melodious voice and in the same unknown tongue Luciana had used, he unleashed what sounded like a mighty oration. At length he finished and the congregation answered back. Again Beck preached. Again the congregation answered back. Then Beck gave them more. And then more still. With every breath intensifying his blistering salutation as if to draw down the heavens.

Each time the congregation responded. Each time Beck increased his delivery. His passion, momentum, and fervor bellowing forth like some unstoppable hell-bound train. It was a colossal, highly orchestrated performance designed to boil the blood and make unforgettable the emotion of this heavily guarded, closely shared experience. And Beck kept it going until the entire building threatened to collapse under the sheer force of it.

It might well have been ancient Rome.

Or Nazi Germany.

157

Pop! Pop!

Marten fired the Sig Sauer. The locks on the electrical-room door blasted apart. In an instant Hap ripped it open and then he and Marten and the president moved into the small room. Directly in front of them was a massive electrical panel with two dozen large circuit breakers, with an indication in Spanish of what area of the church each circuit was for. At the top were two larger switches with the words Alimentación Exterior-Outside Feed-lettered in bold black directly above them. Those were the ones the president wanted.

"There may be other panels in the building but those two should shut down everything."

"That door we just came through," Hap was suddenly looking around, "is not an emergency access to this room. It's the only access. Somebody wanted complete control over who got in here."

"Foxx," Marten said. Then something caught his eye: a second narrow steel door mounted into yet another solid concrete wall at the far end of the room. This door, like the first, had flush-mounted hinges but no noticeable hardware, no knob and no apparent lock. What it did have was centered in the wall just above it-the same kind of infrared sensor that had been mounted alongside the monstrous steel door at the end of the monorail tunnel.

Marten took a step closer, looking from that wall to the one next to it that separated the electrical room from the video room. The walls met at right angles, as they should. The difference was the wall here was set a good three feet farther into the room than the same wall in the room where the monitors were mounted.

Suddenly every hair stood up on his neck. He turned to the president. "All those monitors, all those cameras, the automated moves and cutaways that seem preprogrammed. I'll bet that on the other side of that door is some kind of electronic copying device, a computer, maybe something else. They're recording the whole thing: the names of the attendees, places and dates of birth, the close-ups of their faces, their DNA samples, as well the show itself. Putting everything onto a master disc or hard drive or both. Whatever it is amounts to a contemporary version of their ancient 'heavily guarded journal.' It's their protection against themselves.

"These two secured rooms are built side by side like military bunkers. This, like everything else, is Foxx's work, his brain trust. Fireproof, probably even bombproof, set up so no one would get in here without his knowledge or supervision. All the electronics are impeccably designed to make a permanent record of the proceedings without anyone ever touching it and at the same time making certain no one could get anywhere near the master controls to corrupt them. You said you had no proof, Mr. President. If I'm right, there's a treasure of information on the other side of that door."

The voices of the monks rose again, echoing though the speakers in the video room. The three went back to watch. Seconds later Beck proclaimed something. The monks' chant became stronger. Abruptly a second wall of flame rose through the fog encircling the women like fiery snakes. These were like the first outer rings that continued to burn, only they were closer. A tantalizing entertainment that was like a slow striptease, only this was no striptease but a heinously choreographed murder designed to inflict as much human pain as possible.

Now a third ring of fire exploded from below, circled, and came closer still. Cristina shrieked as the flame touched the base of her throne. She looked frantically to Demi for help. But there was no help. For either of them.

Marten glanced at José in the doorway, then looked to Hap. "Shoot the door hinges. If you can't get it open, try the sensor above it." He took Foxx's BlackBerry-like device from his jacket pocket and tossed it to him. "It was Foxx's. I tried to get it to work before, couldn't. You would've been schooled in some of this stuff, maybe you can." Immediately he looked at the president. "We're going. Forty seconds and cut the power."

"Good luck, Cousin," the president said.

For the briefest moment their eyes met and they knew that it might be for the last time. "You too."

"Marten, two things," Hap offered. "I'm giving you an extra sixty seconds."

"Why?"

"To get to the women you'll have to go through that fire. Stop at the room marked 'W/C,' soak your hair and your clothes. That'll take up the extra minute. Next, I'd wager a million bucks that those monks are armed. Weapons concealed under their robes. Any one of them makes a move toward you, shoot him in the face. You'll scare the hell out of the rest."

"I hope," Marten glanced at José, then back to Hap. "Let us out."

158

• ONE MINUTE, 38 SECONDS

The door clicked behind them, Marten slid the Sig Sauer from his belt, and they started down the hallway.

• ONE MINUTE, 32 SECONDS

They were at the storeroom door and then inside.

• ONE MINUTE, 28 SECONDS

Marten picked two flashlights from a shelf near the workbench and handed one to José, then lifted a pair of tin snips from where they hung on the board behind it.

• ONE MINUTE, 24 SECONDS

Marten closed the storeroom door and they moved into the hallway, heading for the W/C, the restroom.

• ONE MINUTE, 20 SECONDS

José watched the door while Marten took off his groundskeeper's uniform. Shirt first, then pants, and dunked them both in the toilet. When they were sopping wet he pulled them back on and stopped at the washbasin to drench his hair.

Sixty seconds later exactly, they left the W/C.

• 19 SECONDS

Now they were at the stairs and starting up, Marten first, tin snips and flashlight in his belt, Sig Sauer in his hand, his mind on the stage, the altar behind it, and the door they would go through to reach both. Thinking too, about the emergency lights that would come on as soon as the power was cut. Where they were located and how much they would illuminate.

Marten had taken the tin snips to cut the women free, but now he worried what the material was that had been used to bind them. If the snips didn't work, his only alternative would be to shoot the bindings free. Tricky under any circumstances because it would have to be done very quickly and accurately, never mind the dark. The situation with Demi was made all the worse because she was bound not only at the wrists and feet but at the throat. A missed shot there could be fatal.

• 14 SECONDS

They reached the top of the stairs and saw the hallway to the side that Hap had described. Marten turned José quickly down it.

• 10 SECONDS

The hallway ended. The door was right there. Marten suddenly worried it might be locked. He turned the knob. There was a slight click as the mechanism released. He pushed against it ever so slightly. The door gave and opened a crack. He pulled it back.

• 6 SECONDS

He looked at José. The teenager smiled and nodded.

"Gracias, José, gracias."

José smiled again and fisted him on the shoulder. Marten smiled and fisted him back. This kid was terrific. He could do anything and already had.

• 2 SECONDS

One!

The hallway went dark.

159

• 9:16 A.M.

Marten and José stepped through the door in the dark. Twenty feet in front of them they could see the fog-shrouded stage and in the center of it the roaring circles of fire surrounding Demi on the right and Cristina on the left. As yet, and mercifully, neither had begun to burn.

From what Marten could see there was one more ring yet to ignite, and that was directly at the feet of both women. Once the gas jets opened and caught fire, the women would begin to burn and the screaming would start. Clearly the Covenant's hellish cabaret had been designed to create as much titillating drama as possible before the actual murder began. Heinous as it was, it was just this deliberately measured tempo that had so far kept the women alive.

"Go," Marten whispered, and they moved to the darkness to the right of the altar. From there they could just make out the members of the congregation, all talking in confusion about the sudden loss of power. They were a collection of vague figures lighted only by the spill from three stained-glass windows high above and by the soft flood of a half dozen emergency lights that illuminated the exits leading to the main doors. Everything else was dark.

Marten took José by the arm and motioned him forward, making a semicircular motion that meant he should go to the front of the stage and then come in from the side, waiting until then before turning on his flashlight and beginning his decoy act as a maintenance man.

• 9:17 A.M.

"What happened?" Luciana found Beck and three monks huddled in the dimness just off the stage.

"We don't know, we accessed the two main breaker panels off the nave. Everything was in order," Beck said brusquely. Abruptly he looked to one of the monks. "Cover the doors, no one in or out. Put six men on the vice president's section. We have no idea what this is."

• 9:18 A.M.

"Where and what, exactly?" Captain Diaz demanded in Spanish from a large curly-haired man in white pants and a white T-shirt. The two were standing nose to nose in the center of the Aragon Resort's laundry, Bill Strait, Dr. James Marshall, and three CNP officers hovering just feet away.

"Four clean groundskeeper's uniforms are missing," the laundryman said hurriedly in Spanish. "The opening man counts inventory every morning. The closing man does the same at night. Because it's Sunday and because of all the security we have very few people on; I only came in to count them about ten minutes ago."

Immediately Diaz turned to Strait and Marshall. "Four groundskeeper's uniforms are missing. He found them gone a little after nine."

• SAME TIME

Hap cursed out loud as the aging screwdriver he'd retrieved from the storage room slipped out of the slot of the final screw of eight. By now they should have been outside, texting Woody for help. Instead they were in Merriman Foxx's inner bunker trying to remove the housing from dual interconnected computers in an effort to remove their hard drives; hard drives, the president insisted, reflecting what Marten had said, very possibly containing the Covenant's own DNA and "a treasure trove of vital information." Despite Hap's protest and the ticking clock, he'd steadfastly refused to leave without doing everything possible to retrieve them. At that point Hap knew he had no choice but to go along and had given themselves the four to five minutes-the time he'd allotted to Marten to get the women out-to do it.

Breaking into the bunker had been the easy part. He'd taken two shots at the door locks with the machine pistol and made not so much as a dent in the steel. That left only Foxx's BlackBerry-like device.

Marten had been correct when he'd told Hap "You would've been schooled in some of this stuff." He had. Before joining the presidential detail he'd been in charge of the Miami field office of the Secret Service's electronic crimes task force, where he was an expert in advanced electronics-based crime. Examining Foxx's hand-held gadget he'd quickly recognized that it was more a computer than a simple communications tool. A closer look suggested it was some kind of miniature superprocessor, one that most probably utilized synthetic flawless diamonds that generate relatively no heat to enable ultrafast computations in so small a machine. He had worked with similar laboratory prototypes before and believed Foxx's device was little different. He'd been right. It had taken him only seven tries to break Foxx's encrypted code and get the bunker door open.

"Finally. Damn," he breathed as the last screw came loose and he slid the covers back. At first glance the inner workings of both machines were extremely complex, yet the hard drives of both were clearly accessible. Still, he didn't like it.

"Mr. President, I'm sure these drives are password-protected. I pull them without using it and there's every probability they'll be permanently corrupted if not just blank. We're fast out of time here. I either pull them right now and take that chance or we just leave them and get the hell out of here. You decide."

"Pull them, Hap," the president said. "Pull them now."

160

• 9:19 A.M.

José was nearly to the front of the stage. To his left and behind him he could just see Marten moving toward the women. Suddenly José froze. Beck was crossing the stage, coming directly toward him. Instantly he stepped back. At the same time Beck stopped and addressed the congregation.

"Friends," he said in English, "we have a simple power failure, nothing else. Bear with us a few moments more while we attempt to resolve the problem."

A loud uneasy murmur passed through the two hundred.

"Hey, you!" A male voice commanded in Spanish. José whirled to see two of the black-robed monks jump up on the stage and start toward him.

"Who are you?" the first monk spat in Spanish. "What're you doing here?"

José glanced to the side and saw Beck looking in his direction. Immediately he turned on his flashlight.

"Maintenance," he said in Spanish. "Here to find the trouble."

"Who sent you? How did you get into the building?"

Sig Sauer in one hand, the tin snips in the other, his hair and clothes still wet, Nicholas Marten moved like a shadow across the stage behind the fires. Two seconds, three and he reached them. Demi was less than six feet away on the far side of the flames; Cristina was the same distance to her left. The discharge of heat was horrendous and both women seemed to be in a stupor.

Marten could see José near the front of the stage talking with the monks. He saw Beck move toward them, then suddenly stop and look in the direction of the women. As quickly he looked past the flames and directly toward Marten. In the next instant their eyes met and Marten saw total surprise register on the minister's face. As quickly the emotion became recognition of what was happening. Immediately Beck turned and disappeared into the darkness.

Marten looked back to the women. He took a deep breath and held it, then threw up an arm to protect his face and stepped through the fire.

• 9:20 A.M.

Beck rushed off the stage and started down a hallway just off the nave, fully determined to execute a long-planned action.

"Reverend," he heard Luciana call after him.

He whirled. She was a dozen feet down the corridor behind him. "Inform the congregation the service is over," he said. "The power outage will have released the locks. Everyone is to leave the building and board the buses immediately. Make certain the monks let no one in from the outside."

"What is it?"

"One score and five," he said then turned and walked quickly down the corridor, the way he had been going.

"One score and five," Luciana knew what had happened and what was soon to happen. It would be one score and five, twenty-five years, Foxx had told them, from the day construction began-of the resort, the tunnels, the monorail, the underground labs, the church, everything-to when it would be shut down and destroyed.

Today, on this date exactly, one score and five had passed and everything would be ended. Rightly so from Luciana's view. The coming of Demi Picard had signaled it. Her undying love for her mother had been a curse. One far worse than any of them had imagined. She'd known it the moment she'd seen her.

• 9:21 A.M.

"Demi! Demi!" Marten commanded, trying to shake her from her stupor. He saw her eyelids flutter. "It's okay. Don't move!" he said quickly, then had the tin snips at the heavy strap that bound her throat to the Aldebaran cross. His face and hands glistening with sweat, the searing heat all but unbearable, he was trying not to breathe at all. "Don't move!" he exhaled and closed the snips. Nothing happened. He pressured the cutters again and this time the teeth caught and the material gave. Demi's head fell forward, then she recovered, and he saw her look at him in disbelief.

"Mr. Marten!" José shouted from somewhere on the far side of the flames. He looked up to see Luciana cross the front of the stage, heard her start to say something to the congregation.

Then he saw two monks coming right at him through the flames, one behind the other, machine pistols in their hands.

Boom! Boom!

Marten fired the Sig Sauer point blank. The first monk's face exploded and he slammed backward through the fog.

Boom! Boom!

Marten fired again. The second monk twisted away in the dark.

Marten heard the congregation scream as one.

"José! José!" he yelled, then cut the straps at Demi's wrists and feet. Her knees buckled as he pulled her from the cross. He got one hand under her waist trying to steady her. Then José was through the fire, his hair and groundskeeper's shirt burning.

Suddenly there was a burst of machine-pistol fire. A bullet nicked Marten's ear. A second seared his cheek. A half dozen more shot up the cross where Demi had just been.

Boom! Boom!

Marten fired blindly through the flames. The spit of the machine pistol continued. Rapid-fire hell coming through the flames.

Boom! Boom!

He fired again and the shooting stopped. He twisted around, shoving Demi at José.

"Go!" he yelled. "Go! Go! Go!"

He caught the briefest glimpse of José wrestling Demi through the flames to the stage behind them, then whirled to free Cristina. As he did, the innermost gas jets ignited, and he was suddenly standing in the center of a blazing inferno. He screamed out loud and made a wild reach with the cutters, trying to find the straps that bound her.

Then he froze.

Most of Cristina's head was gone, chewed up by machine pistol fire. In the next instant her great mane of jet-black hair burst into flame. For a millisecond Marten's eyes registered sheer horror. Then, his own hair on fire, his hands and face scorched, he turned and leapt out through the conflagration.

161

• 9:23 A.M.

The room was at the far end of a darkened hallway. Like the video and electrical rooms below, it was little more than a concrete bunker. Beck had gained access to it through two separate doors. The first was wooden and hand carved, and like other doors throughout the church required a security card used in conjunction with a code punched into an electronic keypad. The second, only feet away, was made of heavy-gauge steel and required another keypad code, which opened a singular slot above it and into which he slipped a special key Foxx had given him. Once inside he sat down in front of a six-foot-long control panel that looked like something out of NASA and incorporated a series of television monitors, switches, dials, and gauges that were like those in an industrial natural-gas-transmission plant, which was very nearly what this room was. That the power was out in the rest of the building was not evident here. Every light, monitor, switch, dial, and gauge operated perfectly, the entire system powered by Chinese-made heavy-duty polymer batteries.

Beck took a breath, then scrutinized the string of carefully labeled gauges in front of him.

Among them:

Pressure Transducer Cylinder Pressure Distortion

Centrifugal Surge and Pulsation Control

Piping Vibration Control

Piping Configuration Optimization

Leak Detection Control

Compressor Vibrations

Satisfied by their readings, he looked down and flipped five switches in succession. Then he took a second key, inserted it into an eyehole on the panel, and turned it. Immediately a half dozen gauges changed color from red to bright green. A digital timer started at sixty minutes. Beck ran it down to fifteen and stopped it. "One score and five," he breathed, "one score and five."

In a mechanical room in the tunnels far below a two thousand horsepower diesel engine was driving a gas, turbine-driven, centrifugal compressor. For the better part of two hours it had been pumping natural gas through massive twenty-inch pipelines and six-inch nozzles, charging the miles of old mining shafts, monorail transport tunnels, Foxx's laboratories, work areas, and holding cells with highly explosive, lethal fumes. The church itself was to have been the last charged, the filling to have begun once the hydraulic stage had been lowered to its hidden room below and the original floor was back in place, and when the services were over and the security forces had completed their sweep of the building and left.

Marten's presence changed that. In Foxx's absence, control fell to Beck as arranged by the Covenant's carefully designed rules for succession of power. While the Covenant's overall program fell this year to the U.S. in the revolving international chair of stewardship, the security of the Aragon project was, after Foxx's death, officially Beck's. Meaning its long-planned destruction was now fully in his hands.

Beck studied the gauges and monitors once more. Satisfied, he looked at the timer. Once started, it would activate the nozzles in the church's basement and the building would begin to fill with gas. In fifteen minutes it would rise to the level of the jets burning onstage. When it did the building and everything in it would explode. At the same time igniters in the tunnels would trigger, and a firestorm reaching as much as 2,500 degrees would roll through everything below. A "slow buildup of methane gas over the decades" the authorities would call it, and connect it to the explosion that the day before had rocked the ground beneath the monastery at Montserrat. It was an inferno the authorities would let burn itself out, and it would be weeks if not months before it did. In the end there would be nothing left but collapsed tunnels and a residue of super-heated dust.

Three decades earlier the membership had agreed on a far-reaching strategy for the Middle East and engaged a recently initiated member named Merriman Foxx to devise the plan for it. Three years later he had presented that plan to the membership. In it, and in precise terms, he outlined what needed to be done and where, how much it would cost and how long it would take, and what would happen to it afterward. They had agreed, and the project was put in motion. Two years after that the land had been bought and construction on what they termed "The Aragon Project" had begun. And now, twenty-five years later to the day, Beck, fully employing the authority invested in him, had taken control and moved up the hour.

"One score and five," he said once more, as if in final homage to that authority and to his own loyalty, then started the timer. Immediately he turned to a small computer beside it, slid a ThumbDrive from his pocket, and inserted it into the computer's USB port, then looked at the monitor just above it. A moment later a bar came up asking for a password. His fingers went to the keyboard, he typed in a password, then repeated it. A split second later he moved the cursor to Drive C: and clicked on, then dragged the entire contents to Drive A:. Ten seconds later he asked the computer for permission to remove the mass storage drive from the USB port. Permission was given, and he slipped the ThumbDrive from the machine and put it back in his pocket. The power outage had affected everything in the building but this room here and the backup battery supply for the master computer in the bunker below, where the Covenant's archive files were recorded and stored. Both machines were interconnected so no matter what might happen there the same information was always backed up here. It was just those files, that information, that Beck had safely copied onto the ThumbDrive.

Beck stood and took one last look around. Satisfied everything was in order, he left, securing the doors behind him. It was 9:25 A.M. At 9:40 precisely the rising gas would reach the burning jets on the stage and the inferno would begin.

162

• 9:27 A.M.

His nerves on edge, machine pistol in hand, Hap hustled the president up the stairs and down the corridor toward the rear exit. They were already four minutes past the time he had allocated to Marten and José to get to the women and get them out, and he didn't like it. That he had the two hard drives from Foxx's master computers in his pants pocket was little solace. His sense was the same now as it had been when he'd cautioned the president at the beginning, that without entering the correct password before removing them they would be corrupted and therefore useless. Useless hard drives in exchange for the life of the president made no sense at all, but it had been done, and all they could do was move on. And they were.

Thirty feet down the corridor was the door leading out to the church's back parking lot where they had left the electric cart. Hap took out the BlackBerry he had preprogrammed with the text message he would send to Woody the moment he was free of the building and had a clear signal.

Ten feet more and he saw the president look up anxiously as they passed the stairway Marten and José would have used to get up to the church proper. It was dark and quiet and he knew what the president was thinking. That maybe they had rescued the women and were already outside waiting. But that, like the uncorrupted removal of the hard drives, was a pipe dream and he knew it. The situation in the upper church was far too complex for two men, or rather a man and a boy, to navigate successfully. By now he was certain both Marten and José were dead. The women too.

"Hap!" he heard the sharp cry of Marten's voice behind them. They whirled to see Marten and José appear at the bottom of the stairs with Demi between them. Her complexion was deadly white, her head slumped on her chest, her hair and scarlet dress burned and still smoldering. Seemingly half conscious, she sobbed uncontrollably.

"Marten, my God!" The president turned and was heading toward them. Hap caught him and turned him back.

"Dammit! No! Mr. President, we're going! Now!"

"The other girl?" The president's eyes were still on Marten.

Marten shook his head as he moved them forward. His hair was singed, his face and hands burned and blackened. José was much the same.

Now they were at the door. Hap held them up, then opened it cautiously. A half second later he stepped out alone, lifted the BlackBerry, and sent the rescue message to Woody.

163

• 9:30 A.M.

Hap turned to go back inside. His intention was to hold them all just inside the door for the six to eight minutes it would take for Woody to arrive with the chopper. He'd barely gone two paces when he heard the unmistakable sound of a helicopter starting up at the front of the church. Immediately came the high whine of a second helo firing up. He glanced at the door, then turned back and went up on the knoll he'd climbed when they first came in for a better view. Forty yards away he saw Marine Two and its identical companion helicopter, their doors open, in pre-preparation for take-off. Beyond them evening clothes-clad members of the New World Institute were streaming from the church and heading for the black buses. Spanish Secret Service were everywhere. He wished he knew what was going on in the church, if the gas jets had been shut off and the stage lowered away and out of sight in favor of the building's original floor. And what about the other woman, Cristina? From Marten's expression and shake of his head she had to be dead. What happened to her body? And what role would the monks play in this now? Were the church vans parked here at the back of the church theirs? Was that how they had arrived? If so, at any moment they would be coming down the stairs inside the church toward the door where the president and the others were huddled.

Suddenly he caught sight of Roley Sandoval, special agent in charge of the vice-presidential detail, leading a group of U.S. Secret Service agents hastily escorting Vice President Rogers, the secretaries of state and defense, and the rest of Rogers's elite entourage which now included Congresswoman Jane Dee Baker toward Marine Two.

Whatever had happened, whatever was going on, and if it hadn't been before, time now had suddenly become everything. The monks aside, the moment the helos left and the buses were loaded, the Spanish Secret Service would sweep the building and then secure it. It meant they had nowhere to hide until Woody arrived, except maybe among the trees that surrounded the parking area.

The doors closed on both helos. There was a deafening roar as Marine Two lifted off, gained altitude, then flew away, heading due south. Immediately the second Marine helo followed. In seconds both machines disappeared from view.

• 9:34 A.M.

Hap looked to the buses. People were already boarding them. How much longer would it be before the monks came down and the Spanish Secret Service went inside and began their sweep? He wanted to keep the president inside and out of sight but that was no longer an option. He had to get them out of the building and into the cover of the trees or risk a firefight with the monks or capture by the Spanish Secret Service or both.

Decision made, he was turning to go back inside when there was a thundering roar and a Spanish CNP helicopter passed overhead at treetop level. A half second later it reversed course and came back. Hap dove for the cover of a big tree and watched the CNP helo approach and then slow. Suddenly it stopped to hover directly over the parking lot. He could see the pilot looking down and talking first with his first officer and then animatedly into his headset. Seconds later the machine pulled up to two hundred feet and held there, hovering where it was.

Hap looked up and past it. Where the hell was Woody? Did he not get the message? Or had he gotten it and alerted the CNP and that's why the police chopper was there now? Behind him he could see the string of sleek black buses begin to pull away.

"Damn it," he breathed, "damn it." There was nothing he could do without exposing himself to the CNP chopper and by doing so give away the president's location. On the other hand, he couldn't wait until either the monks or the Spanish Secret Service reached the corridor where the president and the others hid.

He looked at his watch. It was nearly 9:35. Where the hell was Woody? Was he coming at all?

164

The timer Beck had set in the control room clicked down to an even five minutes.

Then to 4:59.

The gas had already filled the church's lower chambers and was quickly rising. It, like that in Foxx's dirty lab, was natural gas that was primarily methane but, by Foxx's design, did not have the organic chemical mercaptan added to give it odor. As a result anyone still inside the building would be wholly unaware that lethal fumes were present.

• 4:58

A CNP chopper lifted off from the resort's golf course, Captain Belinda Diaz riding shotgun in the copilot's seat. In seats behind her were six members of Bill Strait's U.S. Secret Service detail. Seconds later another CNP helo took off with a dozen more U.S. Secret Service agents aboard. At a hundred feet the Diaz helo spun left and flew toward the church. The second chopper followed.

"This is Captain Diaz," she said into her headset in Spanish. She was plugged into the broadcast frequency of every Spanish police unit and the security detail of the Spanish Secret Service. "Objectives believed to be at back entrance to La Iglesia de Santa Maria. CNP units seven through twelve respond. Secret Service on scene respond at will and with caution."

Machine pistol concealed under his shirt, Hap left the cover of the tree and walked slowly toward the church, glancing up once at the CNP helo hovering overhead, then pausing to pick up the rake José had used to clean the leaves from the flower beds and put it in the back of the electric cart.

"You, groundskeeper!" the helo's loudspeaker hailed in Spanish. "Police! Stop where you are!"

Hap's boldness had come from the sudden realization that he, like José, Marten, and the president, still wore the resort's groundskeeper uniforms. By now it was possible, if not probable, that the uniforms or the electric cart or both had been discovered missing from the maintenance buildings. If that were the case the CNP, and most probably Bill Strait and his hundreds of Secret Service and CIA operatives, knew about it and were frantically searching the resort's vast acreage for the cart and/or groundskeepers. If he was right, then he was purposely making it easy for them. He was also buying time. Hoping that at any second Woody would arrive in the attack helicopter and set it down in the parking lot. The action itself confusing everyone and giving them the seconds they needed to get aboard it.

Hap looked up, raised his hands, and then pointed toward the church door where the president and the others were. As quickly he lowered his hands and walked calmly to it. As he did he saw a half dozen police SUVs racing tailpipe to tailpipe up the hill toward the church.

In the control room Beck's manually set timer continued its countdown:

4:08

4:07

Hap entered the church quickly, expecting the president, Marten, José, and Demi, no matter her psychological state, to be ready to go right then. They weren't. José was on the floor, semiconscious, his shirt torn open, and Marten was over him, working on his chest; blood was everywhere. The president held a still-sobbing, near hysterical Demi several feet away, giving Marten room to work.

"What the hell?" Hap blurted.

"José was shot. Nobody realized it until he collapsed. Somewhere in the upper chest," the president said quickly.

"Mr. President, there is no time. The Spanish police are here. Their Secret Service people are around the corner. If Woody's coming he's going to be here at any second. We have to go out now!"

"We can't leave them."

"We have to!"

"Marten," the president snapped. "Can we get José on his feet?"

"I think so."

The president looked at Hap, then Demi. "Take Demi. Demi, go with Hap!" Immediately he bent to Marten, and they both helped José up then he looked to Hap.

"Go. Go out now!"

Inside the church the control room timer continued its cold countdown.

3:12

3:11

The rear door to the church flew open. Hap came out first and fast, his gold U.S. Secret Service badge pinned to his shirt collar, his right hand on the machine pistol under his shirt, his left arm around Demi half dragging, half cradling her. The president and Marten came next, José between them, his good arm thrown over Marten's shoulder, the president on his other side holding him up by his belt.

"Freeze where you are! Now!" a disembodied voice commanded in Spanish over a loudspeaker. "Halt immediately!" the same voice said in English.

The Spanish police SUVs were parked directly in front of them, blocking off the parked church vans, the electric cart, and the road out itself. Twenty heavily armed uniformed police stood in front of them. The CNP chopper had now pulled up to five hundred feet and hovered there. Immediately it was joined by Captain Diaz's helo. The second CNP helo following pulled up and held position.

"I see them," Diaz said with a wave to the other chopper pilot. A half beat and her helo dropped down to two hundred feet and held.

To his left Hap could see at least twenty Spanish Secret Service agents coming over the hill from the front of the church.

"United States Secret Service!" Hap yelled. Then repeated it.

No one moved.

"What now?" the president said quietly.

"Tell them we are the U.S. Secret Service and have a wounded man here who needs immediate medical attention," Hap said quietly.

The president took a half step forward. "We are the United States Secret Service. This man is badly hurt. He needs a doctor right away!" he barked in Spanish. "Medical help immediately!"

Beck's timer continued its inexorable march toward zero.

2:17

2:16

2:15

Captain Diaz looked over her shoulder to the U.S. Secret Service agent looking out the window directly behind her. "They say they are your people. Do you recognize anyone?"

"Looks like our SAIC, but from here and in that uniform he's wearing I'm not sure. The woman is a surprise. Don't recognize anyone else."

Diaz turned back and spoke into her headset. "CNP ground units to take charge."

In the next moment four of the armed CNP police started slowly forward, the leader motioning the Spanish Secret Service to hold their positions as he did.

"Damn it, Woody!" Hap breathed. "Where the hell are you, playing golf?"

As if in divine response a monstrous shadow suddenly blocked out the sun. Then with a thundering roar, its prop wash sending dust and debris flying and the Spanish police and the Spanish Secret Service ducking for cover, the huge twin-rotored U.S. Army Chinook helicopter came in just over the treetops, slipping in under Captain Diaz's chopper and obscuring it from sight.

"Woody!" the president cried out.

"Four minutes ago that chopper was on the ground. What the hell's going on?" Captain Diaz's pilot looked to her, his eyes wide under his helmet visor. "What do I do?"

"Captain Diaz. This is Special Agent Strait," Bill Strait's voice came over her headset. "The Chinook is cleared to land. Please stand down."

For a moment Diaz said nothing, finally she did. "Hold position," she said to her pilot, then spoke into her headset. "The Chinook is cleared to land. All units hold position."

Hap stared wide-eyed as the Chinook came in, "He's never going to set that monster down here. There's no damn room!"

Counting its churning rotor blades the Chinook was one hundred feet long nose to tail. The parking area surrounded by trees might be that give or take ten feet in either direction. If Woody was going to land without incident he was going to need skill, luck, grease, and a shoehorn to do it.

Inside the church, Beck's timer continued to click down.

1:51

1:50

1:49

The Chinook dropped lower. Now they could see Woody at the controls, looking fore and aft and to the sides, judging the trees as if he were trying to park a semitrailer in a space made for a car. Suddenly there was a loud gnashing to the rear as the tail rotor sheared branches off of a large conifer and sent them flying. Then with a heavy bump the Chinook touched down.

"Go!" Hap yelled. "Go!"

Marten and the president rushed José forward. Hap followed with Demi.

The Chinook's crew door suddenly slid open and Bill Strait and two medics stood there. Five seconds, ten. And they were at the helo and being helped inside. Another ten and the crew door slid closed. Immediately there was a deafening roar as Woody pulled back on the throttle. A split second later they were off the ground and airborne. In eight seconds they had cleared the trees. Eight more and the machine turned 180 degrees and flew off to the east.

165

This is Captain Diaz," her voice crackled through every headset. "All units stand down and return to base. Repeat, stand down and return to base."

Inside the church, the timer continued to click down.

0:31

0:30

0:29

"You can look at me later," the president said to the two doctors and the medics over the roar of the Chinook's rotors. "It's him." He turned to José. "He's been shot and badly burned. Someone look at Ms. Picard too and right away. She's burned and severely traumatized. Mr. Marten also needs to be treated for burns."

"Thank God you're safe."

The president whirled at an all-too-familiar voice.

National Security Adviser Dr. James Marshall was coming toward him from the Chinook's flight deck. "I tried to stay out of the way here," he said with utmost sincerity. "You've been through some ordeal."

0:05

0:04

0:03

"Why are you here?" the president asked Marshall point blank, his eyes little more than angry slits, his voice cold as death. "Why the hell aren't you with the others?"

From somewhere below and behind them came a dull heavy boom that sounded like a massive explosion.

"What was that?" Marten turned to look out the Chinook's window. In the next instant the shock wave hit. The Chinook was thrown sideways then dropped like a stone. Woody touched the controls. The rotor speed increased and the aircraft shook in response, then rose up quickly as he regained control.

The president moved to the window next to Marten. Hap came in too, so did Bill Strait. In the distance they could see flame and smoke billowing from the hilltop where the church had been.

"Woody, swing around!" the president yelled.

"Yes, sir."

The Chinook came around hard and flew back toward the billowing fiery inferno where the church had been. In that instant the rest of Foxx's destruction deployed. It was like nothing any of them had ever seen before. The maintenance buildings blew straight up, disintegrating into a million pieces. Then they saw a line of dust run the length of the vineyard as if some great underground snake had shivered. The line continued across a low expanse of foothills and then up into the mountain range where they had been the night before, racing in the direction of the monastery at Montserrat. Now and again giant puffs of flame erupted from cracks and chimneys in the rock.

"Foxx," Marten said and looked at the president. "He blew up the church, the maintenance buildings, the entire monorail tunnel, everything. The monks may even have still been inside."

"The nozzles in the monorail tunnel," the president said. "He planned it all far ahead of time. No one will find a thing. Not a trace of what he did. Nothing at all." Suddenly the president pulled away from the window to look at Marshall. "Is the monastery going up too?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You don't?"

"No, sir."

"It won't get to the monastery," Marten said quietly. "It's what he blew earlier. There's nothing left there. It'll stop at the end of the monorail."

The president looked to Hap, "Have the CNP alert the monastery. At least they'll have some kind of warning if it does go."

"Yes, sir."

The president's eyes shifted to Woody. "Major, are we fully fueled?"

"Yes, sir."

"Our range is what, one thousand two hundred nautical miles?"

"A little more, sir."

"Then take us out of Spanish airspace, Major, and clear airspace to Germany."

"Sir. I have orders to fly you to an airstrip outside Barcelona. Chief of staff has a CIA jet waiting."

Marten and Hap exchanged glances. Then Hap reached into his groundskeeper's shirt and slid out the machine pistol.

"Major, I've canceled that mission," the president said calmly. "I asked for airspace cleared to Germany; please do so. I'll tell you where exactly when we get closer."

"He can't do that, Mr. President," Marshall came toward him. "It's for your safety. It's all been planned out."

"Mr. National Security Adviser, I think you'll understand when I say the plans have changed. Very soon you and the vice president and every other one of my 'friends' will be taken into custody and charged with high treason. I'd suggest you go over there and sit down. Hap will be glad to escort you." The president stared at Marshall for a long moment. Finally he turned away and looked back to Woody.

"Major, change course now. That is a direct order from the commander-in-chief."

Woody looked at Marshall as if trying to decide what to do.

"Major," Marshall said firmly, "you have your orders. The president has been under a terrible strain. He has no idea at all what he is saying. It's our job to protect him. Hap's too. Along with Bill Strait. It's why we're all here."

Woody stared and then turned back to the controls.

"It's no good, Jim, you're done," the president said. "The Covenant is done."

"Covenant?" Marshall stared at him unbelieving.

"We know, Jim, and who was there. We saw it in operation. Hap, Mr. Marten, myself, even José. All of us."

"You're not well, Mr. President. I have no idea what you're talking about." Suddenly he looked to Woody.

"You have your orders, Major. Stay the course. Stay the course."

The president and Marten looked toward the flight deck. Hap started toward it, machine pistol out.

It was all the time Marshall needed. In two steps he had crossed the aircraft's midsection. A second later he had the crew door open. There was a thundering roar and a terrible blast of air.

"Grab him!" the president yelled.

It was too late. They were at two thousand feet. The doorway was empty. Marshall was gone.