The Machiavelli Covenant

6

• PARIS, FRANCE, 9:30 A.M.

President of the United States John Henry Harris walked side by side with French president Jacques Géroux across the manicured grounds of the Elysée Palace, the official residence of the French president. Both men were smiling and chatting amiably on this bright spring day in the French capital. Keeping pace at a discreet distance were plainclothes agents of the United States Secret Service and of the Direction Général de la Sécurité Extérieure, or the DGSE, the French Secret Service. Prominent too was a select contingent of the international media. This was an arranged photo-op following a private breakfast Harris had had with Géroux and was designed to exhibit the cordiality between France and the United States.

Today was President Harris's 369th day in office: exactly one year and four days since, as vice president of the United States, he had assumed office following the sudden death of President Charles Singleton Cabot; 153 days since he had been re-elected president in an extremely close election; 76 days since his inauguration.

As president, the former vice president and senator from California had made it a campaign pledge to lessen the image of the U.S. as a pugnacious, aggressive superpower and make it more a partner in an increasingly complex global marketplace. His mission in Europe was to warm the still-chilly atmosphere created by America's near-unilateral decision to invade Iraq and the long and bloody aftermath following it. His meeting with the French president today was the first in a week-long series of face-to-face engagements with the heads of the European Union before they all met formally at a NATO summit this coming Monday, April 10, in Warsaw where he hoped to announce a newfound unity.

The trouble was, for all the outward signs of openness and the willingness of the heads of state to meet with him, there was the very real sense it wouldn't work. At least not with the two leaders of primary importance: French president Géroux and Anna Amalie Bohlen, the chancellor of Germany, with whom he would meet this evening in Berlin. What to do about it, especially now after his face-to-face closed-door session with Géroux, was something else and something he needed to weigh before discussing it with even his closest advisers. Thinking before talking had long been his habit, and everyone knew it. It was why he knew they would leave him alone on Air Force One when they made the comparatively short hop to Berlin.

Yet now, as he smiled and chatted with President Géroux as they approached a bank of microphones where they would address a larger gaggle of media, his thoughts were not so much on the state of international affairs but on the recent deaths of Congressman Mike Parsons and his son, and the heartbreaking passing of Mike's wife, Caroline.

John Henry Harris and Parsons had grown up within a mile of each other in the dusty California farming town of Salinas. Fourteen years older, and first as a babysitter when he even changed his diapers, and later simply as a pal, Johnny Harris had been a surrogate older brother to Parsons from the time he had been in junior high school until he left for college on the East Coast. Years later he had been best man at Parsons's marriage to Caroline and then helped him in his run for a congressional seat. In return Parsons and Caroline had been hugely supportive of his own senatorial and presidential campaigns in California. And both had been exceedingly kind and supportive of himself and his wife, Lori, during a long and exhausting battle with the brain cancer that took her life just a week before the presidential election. That long personal history made Mike and Caroline Parsons, along with their son, Charlie, about as close to family as people could get and their tragic deaths at such a young age and so hurriedly following each other had staggered him. He had attended the funeral of Mike and Charlie and would have gone to Caroline's memorial service had not this vastly important European trip already been scheduled.

Now, as seemingly a thousand cameras clicked and whirred and he and President Géroux approached the microphones, he could not help but think of the tableau when he had entered Caroline's hospital room that final night to see her illness-ravaged body lying deathly still under the bedcovers and the young man at her bedside looking up at him.

"Please," he'd said softly, "give me a moment alone with her… She's just… died."

The memory of it made him wonder just who this man was. In all the years he had known Mike and Caroline he had never met or even seen him until that moment. Yet he was clearly someone who knew Caroline well enough to be the only person with her when she died and be moved enough to ask the president of the United States for the privacy to be alone with her for a few moments longer.

"Mr. President," French president Géroux guided him to the microphones, "this is Paris on a glorious day in April. Perhaps you have something to say to the people of France."

"Je vous remercie, M. le Président." I do, Mr. President, thank you, Harris said in French, smiling comfortably as was his nature. It had all been rehearsed of course, as was the short speech he would give in French to the Gallic people about the long tradition of reliance, friendship, and trust between their nation and the United States. Still, as he stepped to the microphones, a part of him was thinking of the young man who had been with Caroline when she'd died, and he made a mental note to have someone find out who he was.

7

• WASHINGTON, D.C., 11:15 A.M.

Nicholas Marten walked slowly through the wood-paneled study of the Parsons' modest home in suburban Maryland trying to do nothing more than look around. Trying not to feel the gaping hole of Caroline's absence, trying not to let himself think that nothing had happened and expect she would walk through the door at any moment.

Her touches were everywhere, especially in the abundance of house plants intermixed with carefully placed brightly colored ceramic knickknacks: a tiny shoe from Italy, a glazed platter from New Mexico, two small pitchers from Holland sitting back to back, a brilliant yellow and green ceramic spoon holder from Spain. The effect was a cheeriness that was clearly Caroline. Yet for all of it, this was unmistakably her husband's room, his home office. His desk was a maze of books and papers. More books were crammed every which way into two large bookcases with the overflow stacked on the floor.

Everywhere were framed photographs: of Mike and Caroline and their son, Charlie, taken at various times over the years; of Caroline's older sister, Katy, who lived in Hawaii and took care of their mother who had Alzheimer's, and who had just been in Washington for Mike and Charlie's funeral and who might or might not be returning for Caroline's memorial service scheduled for tomorrow-he hadn't been in touch with her and so didn't know. There were pictures too of Mike in his professional role as a congressman: with the president, with various members of Congress, with prominent sports and entertainment figures. Many of these people were outspoken liberals, while Mike Parsons, like the president, had been strongly conservative. Marten smiled. Everybody had liked Mike Parsons and which side of the fence you sat on politically meant nothing at all, at least on a personal level. That was, as far as he knew.

Marten looked around once more. Past Mike Parsons's desk and through the open door to the living room he could see Richard Tyler, Caroline's attorney and executor of her estate, pacing back and forth talking on his cell phone. Tyler was the reason he was there. He had called him the first thing that morning and asked if, in light of Caroline's notarized letter giving him access to her and her husband's papers, he might not spend a few hours in the Parsons' home going through some of their personal things. Tyler had conferred with colleagues in his office and then agreed, with the proviso that Tyler himself be present when he did. Tyler had even picked Marten up at his hotel and personally brought him to the house.

The drive through the suburbs had been genial enough but in it there had been something odd, or rather something not discussed, something Marten had purposely left for Tyler to bring up, and he hadn't. The same way no one else seemed to have brought it up either, because it wasn't in the papers or on television or the Internet-the suicide of Dr. Stephenson.

In her own way Lorraine Stephenson had been a celebrity. Not only had she been Caroline's doctor, but Mike's as well. She had also been personal physician to many prominent legislators, men and women, for more than two decades. Her suicide should have been fodder for any number of news outlets, local, national, even international. But it wasn't. Marten had seen nothing about it anywhere. One would have thought that as executor to Caroline's estate Tyler would have been one of the first to know because under the circumstances, where Caroline had given Marten the legal right to examine her medical records, Tyler most certainly would have brought it up. That was, if he knew. So maybe he didn't know. And maybe the media didn't know either. Maybe the police were keeping it quiet. But why? Notification of next of kin? Perhaps. It was as good a reason as any, or maybe there was some other angle the police were working on.

If Stephenson had played it the way she could have and just told him she was sorry but she could not give him access to Caroline's medical records without a court order, he might very well have left it in Richard Tyler's hands and gone back to England. Troubled perhaps, but gone anyway, thinking Caroline had been very ill and in a terrible emotional state, and knowing there was little he could do until and unless Tyler got the court order. But she hadn't. Instead she had run from him and then committed suicide. Her last words about the doctor and none of you, had been said with icy resolve and were followed immediately by her horrifying final act.

What had Stephenson said to him just before she killed herself? "You want to send me to the doctor. But you never will. None of you ever will. Never. Ever."

What doctor? Who had she been so afraid of that she'd take her own life to avoid being sent to?

And who or what was the group or organization she had apparently thought Marten belonged to? The you in none of you?

Those blanks were enormous.

Marten stepped behind Parsons's desk and looked at the stack of working files on top of it. Most of it was legislative stuff. This bill, that bill, this appropriation, that. There were more files to the side, labeled LETTERS FROM CONSTITUENTS TO BE ANSWERED PERSONALLY. Another stack on a side table was labeled COMMITTEE REPORTS AND MINUTES. Taken together the material was mountainous. Marten had no idea where to start or what to look for once he had.

"Mr. Marten." Richard Tyler came into the room.

"Yes."

"I just received a call from my office. One of our senior partners has looked over Caroline's note to you and determined that the firm and myself could be open to major litigation by the Parsons family if we let you continue here without their approval and quite possibly the court's."

"I don't understand."

"You are to leave the premises right now."

"Mr. Tyler," Marten pushed back, "that letter is notarized. Caroline gave it to me for the purpose of-"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Marten."

Marten stared at him for a long moment, then finally nodded and started for the door. Why the message came now, after they were already there and under way meant one of two things. Either the senior partner was more protective of the firm than Tyler was, or somebody else had learned about Caroline's note and wanted Marten's investigation stopped. Marten had known Katy, Caroline's sister, but that had been years before, when he was LAPD detective John Barron, and as far as he knew neither Caroline nor Mike had told Katy what had happened since. That meant she would have no idea who Nicholas Marten was, and to try and explain, especially under the eye of Richard Tyler's attorneys, and/or the court's if it came to that, could reveal his past and make his situation as precarious as it might have been had he been confronted by the police over Dr. Stephenson's death.

Tyler opened the front door and Marten glanced around the house trying to remember it all. It was, he knew, probably the last time he would be in Caroline's home and in the presence of all she had left behind. Once again the reality of her death stabbed through him. It was awful and empty and hollow. They had never spent enough time together. And they never would again.

"Mr. Marten." Tyler gestured toward the door, ushering him out. Tyler followed closely, then closed the door behind him and locked it and they left.

8

• 2:05 P.M.

Victor stood looking out the window of a rented corner office in the National Postal Museum just across from Union Station. From where he stood he could see taxis pulling into the station from Massachusetts Avenue to disperse or pick up passengers going to or coming from the Amtrak trains.

"Victor," a calm voice filtered through his earpiece.

"Yes, Richard," Victor said as calmly, speaking into the tiny microphone on the lapel of his suit jacket.

"It's time."

"I know."

Victor looked like a middle-aged everyman. Forty-seven and divorced, he was balding and a little thick around the waist and wore an inexpensive gray suit and equally inexpensive black wing-tip shoes. The surgical gloves he wore were cream colored and available in any drugstore.

He stared out the window a moment longer, then turned to the desk beside him. It was an everyday plain steel desk, its top bare, its drawers, like the bookcases and file cabinets across the room, empty. Only the wastebasket under it held anything, a round two-inch piece of glass he had cut from the windowpane fifteen minutes earlier and the small cutting tool which he had used to do it.

"Two minutes, Victor." Richard's voice was the same steady calm.

"Acela Express number R2109. Left New York at eleven A.M.,due in to Union Station at one forty-seven P.M. R2109 is seven minutes late," Victor said into the microphone and stepped around the desk to where a large semi-automatic rifle with a telescopic sight and sound suppressor sat on a tripod.

"The train has arrived."

"Thank you, Richard."

"You remember what he looks like?"

"Yes, Richard. I remember the photograph."

"Ninety seconds."

Victor picked up the rifle-mounted tripod and moved it to the window, adjusting it so that the tip of the gun barrel sat squarely in the center of the circle he had cut from the window glass.

"One minute."

Victor brushed a lock of hair from his forehead, then looked through the rifle's telescopic sight. Its crosshairs were trained on the main entry to Union Station, where a wave of just-arrived passengers was coming through in a rush. Victor moved the gun sight carefully over them. Up, down, back and forth as if he was looking for someone in particular.

"He's coming out now, Victor. In a moment you'll see him."

"I see him now, Richard."

Victor's gun sight suddenly squared to follow a dark-skinned man. He was maybe twenty-five, wearing a New York Yankees jacket and blue jeans and looking toward the line of taxi cabs.

"The target is yours, Victor."

"Thank you, Richard."

Victor's right hand slid forward over the rifle stock until it touched the trigger guard and then the trigger itself. Serpentlike, his gloved index finger curled around the trigger. The man in the Yankees jacket stepped toward a taxi cab. Victor's index finger eased slowly back on the trigger. There was a dull pop! as the weapon fired and then a second pop! as Victor fired again.

The man in the Yankees jacket grabbed his throat as the first shot hit. The second exploded his heart.

"All done, Richard."

"Thank you, Victor."

Victor crossed the room, unlocked the door, and left the rented office. Just Victor. Not the rifle or the tripod that supported it. Not the circular piece of cut glass. Not the small tool he had used to make the cut. He walked twenty steps down a corridor lined with doors to other rental offices, then opened a door to the fire stairs and walked two floors to the street below. Outside he climbed into the back of a faded orange van marked DISTRICT REFRIGERATION SERVICES,closed the door and sat on the floor as the van pulled away.

"Everything alright, Victor?" Richard's voice spoke to him from the driver's seat.

"Yes, Richard. Everything is alright." Victor could feel the van lean to the right as Richard turned a corner.

"Victor," Richard's voice or the tone of it never changed. It was always calm and direct and because of it, trustworthy and soothing.

"Yes, Richard." By now, after nearly fourteen months, Victor's state of mind was very nearly the same. Trusting, comforted, directed. Whatever Richard wanted, Victor was happy with.

"We are going to Dulles International airport. Across from you is a suitcase. Inside it are two changes of clothes, assorted toiletries, your passport, a credit card in your name, twelve hundred euros in cash, and a reservation on Air France flight 039 to Paris, where you will arrive at six thirty tomorrow morning and from where you will take a connecting flight to Berlin. Once there you are to check into the Hotel Boulevard on the Kurfürstendamm and wait for further instructions. Do you have any questions, Victor?"

"No, Richard."

"You're certain?"

"Yes, I'm certain."

"Good, Victor. Very good."

9

• 3:40 P.M.

Nicholas Marten was not a drinking man, at least not the kind who sat in the bar of his hotel in the middle of the afternoon drinking whiskey. Yet now, today, this afternoon, still emotionally devastated by Caroline's death, he simply felt like it. He was sitting alone at the far end of the bar working on his third Walker Red and soda and trying to get past the near-crippling wave of emotion that had washed over him the moment her attorney had ushered him out of her house and closed the door behind them.

Marten took another pull at his drink and absently looked around. Halfway down the bar he could see the female bartender in the low-cut blouse chatting with a middle-aged man in a rumpled business suit, her only other customer. The half dozen leather-padded booths across the room were empty. So were the eight tables with accompanying leather chairs in between. The TV behind the bar was tuned to a live news broadcast from Union Station where a man had been shot and killed barely an hour earlier. Not just killed, the on-camera reporter said, but "assassinated," shot dead by a gunman from a window in a building across the street. As yet the authorities had revealed little about the victim other than to say he was thought to have been a passenger on an Acela train that had just arrived from New York City. Nor had there been speculation as to the motive for his killing. Other details were only beginning to trickle in, one suggesting the murder weapon had been left behind. It was a situation that made Marten think again about Dr. Stephenson, wonder again why there had still been no public announcement of her suicide, and made him wonder if somehow her body was still lying on the sidewalk and for some improbable reason had not been discovered. That hardly seemed likely. The only other explanations were what he had thought earlier, that her next of kin had yet to be notified or maybe that the police were working on something they didn't want made public.

"Nicholas Marten?"

A man's voice suddenly crackled behind him. Startled, Marten turned around. A man and a woman were halfway down the bar coming toward him. They were probably in their mid-forties, city-worn and intense and wearing dark off-the-rack suits. There was no question who they were. Detectives.

"Yes," Marten said.

"My name is Herbert, Metropolitan Police Department." He showed his I.D., then put it away. "This is Detective Monroe."

Herbert had a medium build with a touch of belly and gray hair mixed in with natural brown. His eyes were very nearly the same color. Detective Monroe was maybe a year or two younger. Tall, with a square chin, her blond hair cut short and highlighted. She was pretty in a way but too tough and too weary to be attractive.

"We'd like to talk to you," Herbert said.

"What about?"

"You know a Dr. Lorraine Stephenson?"

"In a way. Why?"

This was the thing Marten had dreaded, that someone had seen him outside of her house, maybe even seen him follow after her when she ran off down the street, perhaps even heard the gunshot, and then seen him leave and taken down the license number of his rental car as he drove away.

"You made several calls to her office yesterday," Monroe said.

"Yes." Calls? What is this? Marten wondered. This was a suicide and they'd gone over her telephone records? Well maybe. She knew a lot of important people. The whole thing could be more involved than he thought and have nothing to do with Caroline.

"Persistent calls," Monroe said.

"What did you want from her?" Herbert pressed him.

"To talk to her about the death of one of her patients."

"Who was that?"

"Caroline Parsons."

Herbert half smiled. "Mr. Marten, we'd like you to come down to police headquarters and talk to us."

"Why?" Marten didn't understand. So far they'd said nothing about her suicide. Nothing to suggest they knew he had been anywhere near her residence.

"Mr. Marten," Monroe said flatly, "Dr. Stephenson has been murdered."

"Murdered?" Marten said in genuine surprise.

"Yes."

10

• METROPOLITAN POLICE HEADQUARTERS,

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 4:10 P.M.

Where were you between eight and nine o'clock last night?" Detective Monroe asked quietly.

"In my rental car driving around the city," Marten said evenly, working to give them nothing. In a way it was the truth. Besides he had no other alibi.

"Anybody with you?"

"No."

Herbert leaned forward across the institutional table in the small interrogation room where they sat facing each other. Detective Monroe stood back against the door they had come in. The only door in the room.

"Where in the city?"

"Just around. I don't know where exactly, I'm not familiar with the city. I live in England. Caroline Parsons was a close friend. Her death disturbed me a lot. I just needed to keep moving."

"So you-drove around?"

"Yes."

"To Dr. Stephenson's home?"

"I don't know where I went. I told you, I don't know the city."

"But you found your way back to your hotel." Herbert kept working on him while Monroe remained silent, watching his reactions.

"Eventually, yes."

"About what time?"

"Nine, nine thirty. I'm not sure."

"You blamed Dr. Stephenson for Caroline Parsons's death, didn't you?"

"No."

Marten didn't get it. What were they doing? There was no homicide cop in the world who couldn't tell murder from suicide, at least not the way Lorraine Stephenson had done it. So what were they really going after, and why? Was it possible they too were onto the idea that Caroline might have been murdered? If so, had Stephenson been a suspect? If she had been, maybe it was the police who had been in the passing cars keeping an eye on her home. Maybe they had even seen him sitting in his car, then jump out to accost her as she stepped from the taxi and follow after as she ran off down the street. If that were the case, they might think he had been involved in Caroline's death. If they did, he wasn't going anywhere for some time and showing them the notarized letter she'd signed giving him access to her and her husband's private affairs could make things even worse by suggesting he had coerced her into writing it even though he hadn't even been in the country when she'd done it. Coerced her because he had something else in mind once she was dead, something in her estate or something political her husband had been involved with.

He knew all too well that if the police had any reason to believe he had been involved with Caroline's death or the death of Dr. Stephenson, they would charge him as an accessory and book him. In the process he would be fingerprinted and his prints would be run through the local data bank, the AFIS, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System; and then the national FBI data bank, the IAFIS, the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. At the same time they would query Interpol. If they did they would find he was a former police officer because his prints would still be on file, and ID him under his real name, John Barron. After that it wouldn't be long before those on the LAPD still looking for him knew about it. To them he remained a "person of primary interest" on a Web site called Copperchatter.com-a chat room of cops talking to cops around the world, in cop vernacular, with cop humor, and cop vindictiveness-with his name freshly posted every Sunday night by someone using the moniker Gunslinger but who he knew was Gene VerMeer, a veteran LAPD homicide detective who despised him for what had happened in L.A. those few years earlier, and who had created the Web site just to find him. Find him, and then keep him under close surveillance until Gunslinger VerMeer or some of his cronies showed up to take care of him once and for all.

"How did you know Caroline Parsons?"

Now it was Detective Monroe's turn, and she moved from where she stood by the door to lean beside what appeared to be a large mirror mounted on the room's back wall. It wasn't a mirror at all but rather a one-way glass with an unseen observation room behind it. Who, or how many, were behind it watching him Marten had no way to tell.

"I'd met her a long time ago in Los Angeles," Marten said calmly, trying to stay as matter-of-fact as he could. "We became friends and stayed friends. I knew her husband as well."

"You fuck her a lot?"

Marten bit his tongue. He knew they were trying to get to him any way they could. That it came from a woman made no difference.

"How many times?"

"We did not have a sexual relationship."

"No?" Monroe half smiled.

"No."

"What did you want to talk to Dr. Stephenson about?" Herbert took over again.

"I told you before. The death of Caroline Parsons."

"Why? What did you expect she could tell you?"

"Mrs. Parsons had become seriously ill very quickly and nobody seemed to know exactly what it was. Her husband and son had just been killed in a plane crash and she was an emotional wreck. She called me in England and asked me to come. She died soon after I arrived."

"Why did she ask you to come?"

Marten glared at Herbert. "I told you, we were close friends. You have anyone who would call you like that? Somebody you'd want to be with in your last hours?"

Marten wasn't playing tough guy, he just wanted them to see he was angry. Not just because of the questions and the way they were asking them but so they would see and hear and feel the depth of his relationship with Caroline, that it had been and still was, genuine.

"And since Dr. Stephenson was her primary physician," Monroe came toward him, "you wanted to hear from her what had happened."

"Yes."

"So you called and called but you never got through to her. It made you mad. How mad?"

"She finally did return my call."

"And what did she tell you?"

"That the things I wanted to talk about were privileged information between doctor and patient."

"That was all?"

"Yes."

"And between eight and nine last evening you were just driving around the city?" Now it was Herbert again.

"Yes."

"Alone?"

"Yes."

"Where?"

"I told you, I don't know."

"Anybody see you?"

"I don't know that either."

"Did you kill her?" Monroe snapped suddenly.

"No."

Herbert kept the pressure on: "You're an American but you live and work in England."

"I graduated from the University of Manchester with an advanced degree in landscape architecture. I liked it there and decided to stay. I work for a small firm, Fitzsimmons and Justice, where I design formal gardens and other landscape projects. I have a British passport and consider myself an expatriate."

Herbert got up from the table. As he did, Marten saw him exchange the briefest glance with Monroe. What it told him was startling. They had not come after him because they thought Caroline had been murdered or because they thought he or Dr. Stephenson had been involved with it or because he had been seen chasing after Stephenson in the moments before she killed herself. No, they had picked him up simply because of the phone calls he'd made to her. It meant they were certain she had been murdered. But that was impossible because he had been right in front of her when she shot herself. So why did they believe what they did?

The only possible explanation was that someone had gotten to her body very soon after he'd left and done something to it to make it appear she had been killed. Maybe taken her gun from the scene and then shot her in the face with a weapon of much larger caliber, destroying the evidence of the suicide and making it look like murder and giving the investigators and the coroner little reason to suspect anything else. But why? Unless the motive for the suicide of a woman of her prominence would have been far more carefully scrutinized than if she had simply been killed.

Marten looked to the detectives. He wanted to press them for details about the state of Dr. Stephenson's body when they'd found it, but he didn't dare. Right now it seemed they were still pretty much in the dark about what had happened. Consequently they had nothing they could hold him on, so showing any curiosity at all would only pique their interest, make them wonder why he wanted to know and start in on him again. So best to get off it while he could.

"I think I've answered your questions," he said respectfully. "If you don't mind, I would like to go."

Herbert studied him for a long moment, as if he were looking for something he had missed. Marten held his breath, afraid that this might be when they would ask for his fingerprints just to make certain he wasn't wanted somewhere.

"How long do you intend to stay in D.C., Mr. Marten?" he said, instead.

"Caroline Parsons's memorial service is tomorrow. After that I don't know."

Abruptly Herbert handed him his business card. "You check with me before you go anywhere outside the city. You understand?"

"Yes, sir." Marten tried not to show his relief. For now, at least, they were letting him go.

Monroe walked toward the door and pulled it open. "Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Marten. To your left and down the stairs."

"Thanks," Marten said. "Sorry I couldn't help you more." He went out quickly. To his left and down the stairs.