The Machiavelli Covenant

11

• BERLIN, GERMANY, 10:45 A.M.

The heavy armored doors of the presidential limousine swung closed. The Secret Service agent at the wheel nudged the machine into gear and the car carrying President of the United States John Henry Harris moved slowly away from the German Federal Chancellery, leaving Chancellor Anna Bohlen and a large gathering of the world media behind.

President Harris and Bohlen had met the evening before; had attended a performance of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra; and then, this morning, accompanied by a handful of close advisers, had had a long, cordial breakfast where world issues and the longtime German-American alliance were discussed. Afterward they'd preened for the press, shaken hands and then he had left, the whole thing nearly a mirror copy of what had happened at the Elysée Palace in Paris twenty-four hours earlier. In both situations the president had hoped to start smoothing over the still volatile situation concerning both countries' earlier refusal to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq in the United Nations and their continuing concerns now.

But for all the seeming goodwill and cordiality during both visits, little or nothing had been accomplished and the president was clearly upset. Jake Lowe, his portly fifty-seven-year-old longtime friend and chief political adviser sitting beside him and quietly reading text from a BlackBerry nestled into his palm, knew it.

"None of us can afford this damned ongoing transatlantic rift," Harris said abruptly. "Publicly they agree, but in reality they won't move a quarter of an inch in our direction. Neither one of them."

"It's a difficult path, Mr. President," Lowe responded quietly. The president might characteristically be introspective but anyone who was as close to him as Jake Lowe knew there were times he wanted to talk things through, usually when he had come to a dead end in his own reasoning. "And I'm not sure it has an end that will make everyone happy.

"I've told you this before and I'll say it again now. It's a cruel fact of history that more than once the world has been provided with leaders who are the wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the only thing that corrects it is a change of régime."

"Well those régimes aren't about to change. And we don't have the luxury to wait for the next. We need everybody with us and right away if we're going to put this Middle East Humpty-Dumpty back together again. You know it. I know it. The world knows it."

"Except the French and the Germans."

President Harris leaned back in his seat, trying to relax. It didn't work. He was angry and frustrated and when he was like that and he talked, everything showed. "Those are two steel-jawed, unbendable SOBs. They'll go along but just so far, and when we really get to it they'll pull back and let us dangle in the wind, all the while clapping their hands in glee. There's got to be a way to turn them, Jake, but the damn truth is I don't have a clue as to what it will take. And after yesterday and today, even how to approach it."

Abruptly President Harris turned to look out the window as his motorcade moved through the Tiergarten, Berlin's dramatic two-mile-long city park, then continued along a widely announced route that would take them down the Kurfürstendamm, the main street of Berlin's fashionable shopping district.

The motorcade itself was huge, led by thirty German motorcycle police with two massive polished black Secret Service SUVs traveling in front of three identical presidential limousines, preventing anyone from knowing in which car the president rode. Immediately behind were eight more Secret Service SUVs, an ambulance, and two large vans, one carrying the press pool, the other, the president's traveling staff. The rear was brought up by another thirty-strong contingent of German motorcycle police.

Since they'd left the Chancellery every street and boulevard was massed with people, as if half of Berlin had turned out for a glimpse of this president. Some applauded and waved small American flags; others booed or whistled, shaking their fists and shouting in anger. Others held banners reading: U.S. OUT OF MIDDLE-EAST, HERR PRÄSIDENT, GEHEN NACH HAUSE, HARRIS GO HOME!, NO MORE BLOOD FOR OIL!-one banner read simply: JOHN, LET'S TALK PLEASE. Other people simply stood and watched as the giant motorcade bearing the leader of the world's lone superpower passed before them.

"I wonder what I'd think if I were a German standing out there watching us go by," Harris said, watching the crowds. "What would I want from the United States? What would I think about her intentions?"

He turned to look at Lowe, one of his best friends and his closest political adviser, a man he had known for years when he first entered the Senate race in California. "What would you think, Jake? What would you think if you were one of them?"

"I would probably-" Lowe's conversation was abruptly cut short when his BlackBerry alerted him to a voice message from Tom Curran, the president's chief of staff, waiting for them aboard Air Force One at Tegel Airport. "Yes, Tom," he said into his ever-present headset. "What? When?… see what more you can find out. We'll be on board in twenty minutes."

"What is it?" the president said.

"Caroline Parsons's personal physician, Lorraine Stephenson, was found murdered last night. The police have held back the news for investigative reasons."

"Murdered?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good Lord." The president's eyes shifted away and he stared off. "Mike, his son, then Caroline, and now her doctor?" he said, then looked back to Jake Lowe. "All dead, just like that, and over so short a period of time. What's going on?"

"It's a tragic coincidence, Mr. President."

"Is it?"

"What else would it be?"

12

• BERLIN. HOTEL BOULEVARD, KURFÜRSTENDAMM 12, 11:05 A.M.

Victor."

"Yes, Richard. I hear you."

"Are you at the window?"

"Yes, Richard."

"What can you see?"

"The street. All sorts of people lining it. A big church is across from me. The Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. At least that was what the porter called it when he showed me into the room. Why, Richard?"

"I wanted to make certain the hotel didn't give you a different room, that's all."

"No, they didn't. The room is exactly as I requested. I followed your instructions to the letter." Victor no longer wore the gray suit he had in Washington but instead was dressed in light brown slacks and a dark blue oversized cardigan sweater. He still looked like an everyman, but now his appearance was more academic. A middle-aged professor, perhaps, or a high school teacher. Someone unremarkable who would stand unnoticed in a crowd.

"I knew you would, Victor. Now listen carefully. The presidential motorcade has turned onto the Kurfürstendamm. In-" Richard paused for the briefest moment, then went on; "forty seconds it will come into sight and pass beneath your window. The president is in the third presidential limousine. He's sitting on your side of the car, the rear seat next to the left window. You won't be able to see him through the tinted glass but he's there just the same. I want you to tell me how long it takes for the limousine to pass and if you would have time to get a clear shot at that window from where you are."

"A presidential limousine has bulletproof glass."

"I know, Victor. Don't worry about it. All I want you to tell me is how long it takes for the limousine to pass and if you would have time to get a clear shot from that angle."

"Alright."

President Harris stared out the limousine's window absently watching the crowds his motorcade was passing, his thoughts on his secretary of defense, Terrence Lang-don, in the south of France for a meeting of NATO defense ministers. Langdon was essentially delivering the same message that Secretary of State David Chaplin had a day earlier to his twenty-five NATO counterparts at a working lunch in Brussels: that the U.S. was signaling a new readiness to work more closely with its NATO allies, something the previous administration under President Charles Cabot had all but refused to do.

In a speech to Congress before he left Washington Harris had promised that he would not make this extensive trip to meet European leaders and "come up empty," and no matter the disappointments in Paris and Berlin, he still had the same resolve. He wanted now to concentrate on the next leg of his trip: Rome and dinner tonight with Italian president Mario Tonti, a man whose position he knew was largely ceremonial but whose job it was to unify factions within Italian politics, which made him a strategically important ally.

Harris considered Italy a friend and both the president and prime minister, Aldo Visconti, men he could rely on. But he also knew Tonti would know the meetings in Paris and Berlin had not achieved the results Harris had wanted. It was a failing that would add an element of awkwardness to their meeting because Italy was very much a part of the European Union, and the European Union's long-range goal was to become the United States of Europe and that was something that always had to be taken into consideration no matter the public deportment of its individual members. So how he would present himself to Tonti, what he would say and how he would say it should have been foremost in his mind. But it wasn't. Lay it to jet lag, to his failures yesterday and today, or to his own personal emotions, the thing foremost on his mind was what had happened to the Parsons family and so quickly afterward, the murder of Caroline Parsons's physician, Lorraine Stephenson. Abruptly he turned to Jake Lowe.

"The fellow who was in Caroline Parsons's hospital room when she died. What did we find out about him?"

Harris could see the crowds lining the street in front of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.

"Don't know. It wasn't a priority," Lowe punched some code into his BlackBerry then waited for the information to come up as text.

The president looked to his left and saw they were passing crowds in front of the Hotel Boulevard.

"His name is Nicholas Marten," Lowe read from the text. "He's an American expat living in Manchester, England, and working for a small landscape architectural firm there, Fitzsimmons and Justice." Lowe stopped and read something in silence, then looked to the president. "For some reason Mrs. Parsons signed a notarized letter giving him private access to her personal files and those of her husband."

"Both of them?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I don't have an answer."

"See if you can come up with one. This whole thing is increasingly disturbing."

Victor turned from his perch in the hotel room window. "Richard?"

"Yes, Victor."

"The motorcade has passed. It took seven seconds. I saw the limousine window clearly. I would have had a clean shot for three seconds, maybe four."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, Richard."

"Enough time for a kill shot?"

"With the right ammunition, yes."

"Thank you, Victor."

13

• WASHINGTON, D.C., 7:10 A.M.

Nicholas Marten had turned the television to the local news channel the moment he got out of bed nearly thirty minutes earlier, hoping to hear something about Dr. Stephenson's "murder." But so far there had been nothing. It made him more curious than ever why the police were still holding the information back, and amazed that some aggressive reporter hadn't discovered the story and broken it.

He'd left the volume up, taken a quick shower, and begun to shave. Among the trivia, traffic, and weather reports he learned that the man shot down by a sniper at Union Station the day before had been a Colombian national in the country legally as a baseball player for the Trenton Thunder, a minor league team affiliated with the New York Yankees. An unnamed source revealed that investigators had recovered the murder weapon from a rented office in the National Postal Museum just across the street from the station. Purportedly it was an M14, a standard U.S. armed forces training rifle, manufactured in the hundreds of thousands by any number of firearms companies.

It seemed like a rather peculiar murder-a minor league ballplayer "assassinated"-but no more than that and Marten went back to shaving, his thoughts on how he could devise a way to retrieve and examine Caroline's medical files. For no particular reason he thought of what she had said to him in the hospital when she'd taken hold of his hand and looked into his eyes and said in hesitant speech-

"They… murdered my… husband and… son… and now they've… killed… me."

"Who are you talking about?" he'd asked. "Who is 'they'?"

"The… the… ca…" she'd said. But it was the most she could do, and her strength gone, she'd fallen asleep. They had been the last words she'd uttered before she'd woken later and told him she loved him and then-died.

Marten felt the emotion begin to creep up in him and he took a moment to collect himself before he finished shaving. Done, he went into the room to dress, determined to drag himself from his still-gaping sorrow and get on with the problem at hand.

"The ca…" he said out loud. "What ca? What was she trying to tell me?"

Immediately he thought of the brief time he'd had inside Caroline's home before her lawyer had asked him to leave. What was there? What could he have seen, if only for a moment, that might give him the answer to what she had been trying to tell him? Besides the shortlived walk-through, and apart from appreciating her homey touches, the only place he'd been where there had been anything definitive was her husband's office. The little time he'd spent there he'd seen what? Photographs of the Parsons family, of Mike Parsons with celebrities. Beyond that had been the stacks of working files that covered most of the congressman's desk with more still on a side table. Those, he remembered, had been clearly labeled in felt pen-COMMITTEE REPORTS AND MINUTES. That was it, nothing more.

Frustrated, Marten pulled on his pants and then sat on the edge of the bed to put on his shoes. As he did, the thought hit and he sat bolt upright.

"Committee reports and minutes," he said out loud. "Committee. How would a person begin to say the word 'committee' in everyday speech? Not 'com-mittee' but-'ca-mittee.'"

Could Caroline have meant that someone on a committee Parsons was a member of was responsible for their deaths? But then she hadn't said someone, she'd used the plural they. So if he was right and she had been referring to a committee, had she meant several members of it or the entire group itself? But how could an entire congressional committee be involved in the complex murders of three people, not to mention the other innocents on board Parsons's chartered plane? The idea was crazy, but for now it was all he had.

By his watch it was just a little after seven thirty in the morning. At two he was to attend Caroline's memorial service at the National Presbyterian Church. That gave him a little more than six hours to try and dig into the history of Mike Parsons's recent congressional service and maybe find some sort of answer, or at least the beginning of one.

Marten opened his electronic notebook, clicked it on and brought up the Google search engine. In Search he typed "Representative Michael Parsons's then hit "Enter."

On the screen popped Parsons's Congressional Web page. Marten breathed a sigh of relief; at least Parsons's name was still in the government database. At the top was "Congressman Michael Parsons, Serving the people of California's 17th District. Monterey, San Benito, Santa Cruz Counties."

Parsons's office locations in Washington and California were listed farther down the page, followed by a place to find the committees he had served on. Marten clicked on that and up came the list.

Committee on Agriculture

Committee on Small Business

Committee on Budget

Committee on Appropriations

Committee on Homeland Security

Committee on Government Reform

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

Within those were a number of subcommittees Parsons had also served on. One in particular caught Marten's eye, a subcommittee he was a member of at the time of his death.

Subcommittee on Intelligence and Counterterrorism

Mike and his son had died on Friday, March 10. The subcommittee's last scheduled meeting had been at 2 P.M. on Tuesday, March 7. Its subject had been "Progress in Consolidating Terrorist Watch Lists" and had been held at the Rayburn House Office Building. Listed were the names of its members. Curiously, as opposed to other congressional committee meetings, this one gave no further information, such as lists of witnesses who were to appear before the committee. It was simply blank. Marten tried several different government Web sites and came up with no more information than he had on Parsons's home page. He was certain there was an answer as to why and blamed it on himself and his inability to understand and navigate the workings of the government Web. Still, the proximity to the date of Parsons's death and the fact that there was seemingly no information available about the meeting troubled him. He wanted to find out more, but he didn't know how.

Richard Tyler, Caroline's lawyer, might have helped if someone in his office hadn't already stepped in and shut down Marten's access to the Parsons' personal information. It meant he would get no help there, and if he tried his attempt would be looked on with suspicion or even worse, especially if that same someone wanted his investigation completely stonewalled. If he pushed it he might very well risk physical danger from an unknown source or another visit from the police. Neither of which he wanted.

There was a time element too. Fitzsimmons and Justice, his employer in England, had very graciously given him time off to come to the states to tend to Caroline's situation, but at the same time he was intimately involved in the design of a large landscape project called "The Banfield Job" for Ronaldo Banfield, a star soccer player for Manchester United, at Banfield's country estate northwest of the city. The project was already behind schedule and needed to be completed by the end of May so that the actual work-the ordering of materials, the grading, the installation of irrigation systems and finally the planting-could begin. It meant that whatever he had to do here in Washington had to be undertaken and completed quickly.

Marten got up, thinking that if he went to the Capitol building he might begin to find some answers in the archives there. He was reaching for the phone to call the front desk for directions when he saw a copy of The Washington Post on his bedside table and remembered that several years earlier his close friend Dan Ford had worked for the Los Angeles Times Washington bureau-before he was transferred to Paris and subsequently murdered by the infamous Raymond Oliver Thorne. While in Washington Ford had become friends with a number of journalists from other papers. There had been one he'd come to know well but whose name Marten didn't recall. What he did remember was that he'd been a political writer for The Washington Post. Whether he was still there Marten didn't know but he thought that if he scanned the paper's bylines he just might see a name he would recognize.

It didn't take long. The name was right there on page one, a byline to a story about President Harris's trip to Europe: "President on Rough Road Overseas." The writer was Peter Fadden.

14

"Peter Fadden." The voice on the other end of the line was abrupt and raspy like leather. Marten had expected to hear a younger man; Fadden sounded seventy or more but with the energy of someone who could beat a thirty-year-old to a pulp in an alley or match him drink for drink in any saloon in town. He also sounded like he had Washington in his blood, and had since the days of Eisenhower or maybe even before.

"My name is Nicholas Marten, Mr. Fadden. I was a close friend of Dan Ford. I was also a friend of Caroline Parsons and her husband. I'd like to talk to you in person, if I might."

"When?" Fadden snapped back. There was no "why?" just the gruff "when?"

"As soon as possible. Today, now, this morning. I'm going to Caroline's memorial service this afternoon. Afterward would be okay too. I'll buy you a drink, dinner if you like."

Now it came. "Why?"

"I'm trying to find out what congressional business Mike Parsons was working on at the time of his death."

"Look it up. It's in the public record."

"Some of it is, some of it isn't. I need some help getting more information."

"Rent yourself a high school teacher."

"Mr. Fadden, there might be a story here for you. I'm not sure. I'll explain when we're alone. Please."

There was a long silence and Marten was afraid Fadden was going to brush him off. Then the gruff voice snapped at him.

"You said you were a friend of Dan Ford."

"Yes."

"Good friend?"

"His best friend. I was staying at his apartment in Paris when he was murdered."

Again there was a silence and then Fadden simply said-"Okay."

15

• AIR FORCE ONE, ALOFT OVER SOUTHERN GERMANY. 2:15 P.M.

The television interview with chief CNN European correspondent Gabriella Roche had long been planned and President Harris sat with her for the first thirty minutes of the flight from Berlin to Rome. The flight had been delayed for thirty-seven minutes because of what Berlin air controllers called heavy traffic at Berlin's Tegel Airport but what Jake Lowe had quietly told President Harris was really nothing more than German chancellor Anna Bohlen's way of "busting your balls a little more. Letting you know her true feelings."

"I know her damn feelings, Jake, but we need her," Harris had said, "so I don't know what we can do about it but ignore it."

"Mr. President," Lowe responded quickly, "what if we needed her right now?"

"What do you mean, 'right now'?"

Lowe started to reply but then his ever-mindful-of-schedule chief of staff, Tom Curran, interrupted, telling him it was time to do the CNN/Gabriella Roche interview.

A half hour later the interview was over. Harris joked lightly with Roche and her camera crew then thanked them and went directly to his executive suite, where Jake Lowe was waiting. With him, in shirtsleeves, was the towering six-foot four-inch Dr. James Marshall, his national security adviser, who had flown into Berlin from Washington and joined them as they boarded the plane.

Harris closed the door, then took off his jacket and looked to Lowe. "What did you mean when you said 'what if we needed Chancellor Bohlen right now'?" He spoke as if their brief exchange had just happened and there had not been a television interview in between.

"I'll let Dr. Marshall tell you."

Marshall sat down across from the president. "These are some of the most disturbing times we've ever encountered in our history, maybe even more worrying than at the height of the Cold War. I've been increasingly concerned about our ability to act quickly and decisively in a major emergency."

"I'm not sure I follow you," Harris said.

"Suppose something happened in the next hours and we had to take immediate and significant action somewhere in the world. We would need the French and German votes backing us in the UN right then, and you know now, from personal experience, it's highly unlikely we would get them.

"Let's play a what-if, Mr. President. For the moment forget about the present big-picture politics in the Middle East. Forget about Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, even Iran. This is a deeper, simpler 'what-if.' Suppose al Qaeda or some other zealous group of jihadists, and there are hundreds of them, were to strike Saudi Arabia at midnight tonight. With enough fanatical force, by dawn they could wipe out the entire Saudi royal family. The government would collapse and the fundamentalist movement would explode over the entire region. Moderates would fall by the wayside and be slaughtered or join in the religious fervor that would rage like a wildfire. Within hours Arabia would fall, then Kuwait, then Iraq and Iran, Syria and probably Jordan. In less than thirty-six hours al Qaeda would control everything and the flow of oil to the West would stop, just like that. Then what?"

"What do you mean 'then what?'" The president was staring directly at his national security adviser. "Is this a what-if, or do you have something from intelligence and this is real? Don't screw around here, Jim. If it's real I want to know. And right now."

Marshall glanced at Jake Lowe, then looked back to the president. "What it is, Mr. President, is a bona fide scenario that comes from any number of collective sources and should be taken very seriously. If it happened it would be all but impossible for us to respond quickly or massively enough to contain it. Immediate nuclear response might be our only option. One we wouldn't have time to argue through the Security Council. We would need every member already up and on the same page and moving within hours. It means we have to know beforehand that we have every member nation one hundred percent behind us. And as we well know, Germany might not be on the Security Council but from its influence, it might just as well be."

"What Jim means, Mr. President," Lowe added quietly, "is that we must have an arrangement that will guarantee America instant, ongoing, and unquestioned support in the UN. And as I said before, the way things stand now we don't have it."

President Harris looked from one man to the other. These were longtime members of his inner circle, close friends and trusted advisers, men whom he had known for years, trying to make him understand the importance and relevance of his just-concluded meetings with the leaders of France and Germany. Moreover, it wasn't just the French and Germans they would need, it was also the Russians and Chinese. They all knew that if they had France and Germany behind them, especially if the matter had to do with the Middle East, the Russians would come along as well. So would the Chinese.

"Fellas," he said, in the homey style he used in the company of friends, "the picture you draw may be accurate, and God help us if it is. But I seriously doubt the French and Germans haven't considered some version of it themselves and what they would do in response. In the same breath I can guarantee you that suddenly dropping their stance over a scenario without hard intelligence behind it and giving us a blank check overnight for whatever we want to do isn't one of them."

"That's not necessarily so," Dr. Marshall leaned back and folded his hands in his lap.

"I don't follow you."

"Suppose the leaders of those two countries were people who would give us a blank check."

The president raised his eyebrows, "What the hell does that mean?"

"You won't like it."

"Try me."

"The physical removal from office of the president of France and the chancellor of Germany."

"Physical removal?"

"Assassination, Mr. President, of both. To be replaced with leaders who we can trust, now and in the future."

Harris hesitated, then slowly grinned. It was a joke, he knew. "What do you fellas want to do, get in the video-game business? Set up a frightening situation, find the troublemakers who won't cooperate, then hit the 'assassinate' button and afterward insert whoever you want and write your own ending?"

"It's not a game, Mr. President." Marshall's eyes were locked on the president's. "I'm deadly serious. Remove Géroux and Bohlen and make certain the people we want in power are elected in their place."

"Just like that." The president was stunned.

"Yes, sir."

The president looked to Jake Lowe, "I suspect you agree."

"Yes, Mr. President, I do."

For a moment Harris stood frozen in silence as the weight of what had been presented sank in. Suddenly he flashed with anger. "I'll tell you fellas something. Nothing like that is going to happen on my watch. First, because under no circumstance will I be party to murder. Second, political assassination is forbidden by law and I am sworn to uphold the law.

"Moreover, even if you had your way and the assassinations were carried out, what would you expect to gain? Exactly which people would you want in power and how could you make certain they were elected? And even if they were, what makes you think we could trust them to do what we wanted, whenever we wanted and for as long as we wanted?"

"There are such people, Mr. President," Lowe said quietly.

"It can be done, sir," Marshall added, "and rather quickly. You'd be surprised."

Harris's eyes darted angrily from one man to the other. "Gentlemen, let me say this one more time. There will be no political assassinations on the part of the United States, not while I'm president. And if the subject comes up again you can both dig out your golf clubs and call for a tee time because you will no longer be part of this administration."

For the longest moment neither Marshall nor Lowe took his eyes from the president. Finally Marshall spoke, and in a tone that rang with condescension. "I think we understand your position, Mr. President."

"Good," Harris held their gaze, giving them no ground. "Now," he said brusquely, "if you don't mind there are a few things I'd like to go over on my own before we touch down in Rome."

16

• MR. HENRY'S RESTAURANT, PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, 11:50 A.M.

Marten and Peter Fadden sat in a back booth in the dark-wood-and-authentic-retro atmosphere of this Capitol Hill saloon where the lunchtime crowd was just beginning to make noise and where decades earlier Roberta Flack was first crooning "Killing Me Softly" upstairs.

"Your friend Dan Ford was a heck of a reporter, a very special kind of guy, and-" Peter Fadden leaned in across the table when he talked. It was a manner, studied or not, that accentuated his presence. "His future was bright as hell. To be murdered the way he was? It was all wrong. Nobody should ever die like that. I still miss him."

Fadden, thickset with gray hair and a trimmed gray beard and ruddy complexion, was closer to fifty than seventy and looked even younger. A byline reporter with an old-timer's rough demeanor, he wore brown slacks with a tattersall shirt and worn herringbone jacket. His eyes were sparkling blue and piercing as he watched Marten take a sip of coffee or a bite of tuna sandwich.

"So do I, every day," Marten said genuinely. Nearly five years had passed since Ford's murder in the French countryside, and even now Marten was plagued by the thought that Dan's death was somehow his fault. There was another level too, especially now, because, as with Caroline, they'd been best friends since childhood and all those memories, all their history, compounded his death even more.

It had been Dan Ford the professional journalist with his never-ending string of connections who had made it possible for John Barron to become Nicholas Marten, thereby enabling him to make a new life in the north of England, one far from the reach of the Gunslinger, the deadly LAPD detective Gene VerMeer, and his equally vengeful associates still on the force.

"You said you had a story. What is it?" The sentiment was done. Peter Fadden took a sip of coffee.

"I said I might have a story," Marten said, then lowered his voice. "It has to do with Caroline Parsons."

"What about her?"

"What I tell you has to be off the record."

"Off the record is not a story, period," Fadden snapped. "You either have something or you don't. Otherwise we're wasting each other's time."

"Mr. Fadden, at this point I don't know if there is a story or if there isn't. I'm looking for help about something that's very personal to me. But if it turns out to be true, it's a blockbuster, in which case it's all yours."

"Oh for chrissakes!" Fadden sat back. "You want to sell me a used car too?"

"I want some help, nothing more." Marten's eyes came up to meet Fadden's and held there.

Fadden judged, then let out a sigh. "Okay, off the record. What the hell is it?"

"Caroline Parsons believed her husband and son were murdered. That the plane crash was no accident."

"Now we're back to the used cars. Marten, in this town there's a goddamn conspiracy theory in every toe-nail clipping. If that's all you have, forget it."

"Would it make any difference if I said she told me that on her deathbed? Or that she was convinced the staph infection that killed her in so short a time had been deliberately administered?"

"What?" Fadden's interest was suddenly piqued.

"I realize she'd just lost her husband and only child and was dying herself. The whole thing could have been in her mind, the rantings of a terrified, hysterical widow. And maybe they were, but I promised her I'd do what I could to find out and that's what I'm doing."

"Why? Who were you to her?"

"Let's just say that at some point in our lives we-" Marten paused, then went on, "-loved each other very much and leave it at that."

Fadden studied him. "She give you anything real? Specifics? Why she believed it?"

"As in hard evidence? No. But she was supposed to have been on the same plane with her son and husband. She told me, or tried to tell me, that 'they' were responsible for the crash. When I asked her who 'they' were, she said 'the ca,' but that was all she got out. She couldn't finish it and never did. In thinking it over and tying it to her husband's death, the only thing that made sense was that maybe she was trying to say 'the ca-mmittee.'

"The last committee meeting Mike Parsons attended before he died was the House Subcommittee on Intelligence and Counterterrorism. It took place on Tuesday, March 7, at the Rayburn House Office Building. Its subject was 'Progress in Consolidating Terrorist Watch Lists.' The thing about it is, there are no lists of witnesses who were to appear before the committee. Now I don't know much about how these things work, but scanning the Congressional Record for other committees over a two-week period I never found another that didn't have at least one witness to be presented. And that's why I need you, not just to walk me through the high school algebra of how all this works, but because you're a Washington insider who Dan Ford trusted. You know what goes on in these committees even if you don't write about it. Well, I want to know what was going on in Parsons's committee. What it was about. Why there were no witnesses. What might have happened there that could have made Caroline's suspicions real."

"You're pursuing this emotionally, you know that," Fadden said quietly.

Marten stared at him. "You weren't there. You didn't hear the fear in her voice or see it in her eyes. In her whole being."

"Did it ever occur to you that you might be pissing in the wind?"

"I didn't ask for your opinion, I asked for your help."

Fadden picked up his coffee cup, held it for a moment, then drained it and stood up. "Let's take a walk."

17

Marten and Peter Fadden came out of Mr. Henry's under a partly cloudy sky. Crossing Seward Square, they started up Pennsylvania Avenue toward the U.S. Capitol.

"Caroline Parsons thought her staph infection had been deliberately administered," Fadden said.

"Yes."

"She say by who?"

"We're still off the record," Marten said guardedly.

"You want my help, answer the damn question."

"Her doctor."

"Lorraine Stephenson?" Fadden was clearly surprised.

"Yes."

"She's dead."

Marten half smiled. So at least somebody else did know. "She was murdered."

"How the hell do you know? That information hasn't been made public."

"Because the police told me. I'd called Stephenson several times to ask her about Caroline's death. She refused to discuss it. The police went over her phone records and found me. They thought I might have been angry enough to do something about it."

"Were you?"

"Yes, but I didn't kill her." Suddenly Marten found an opening. If Fadden knew Lorraine Stephenson had been killed, he might also know something of what the police had found, why they were so convinced it had been murder, and why they were still holding the information back. "Fadden, the police talked to me yesterday. Her murder has still not been made public. Why?"

"Notification of next of kin."

"What else?"

"What makes you think there's anything else?"

"She was a name in this town. She was the longtime doctor to a number of people in Congress. Moreover, she was Caroline Parsons's personal physician. Caroline's memorial service is this afternoon. Maybe someone is afraid someone else might see a coincidence and start looking a little further."

"Who might that be?"

"No idea."

"Look, Marten, as far as I know you're the only one who thinks Caroline Parsons was deliberately killed. Nobody else has even suggested it."

"Then why has the murder of a prominent physician been kept so hush-hush?"

"Marten"-they walked by several people, and Fadden waited until they were past-"Lorraine Stephenson was decapitated. It took them that long to find out whose body they had. Her head was nowhere around. Nobody's found it yet. The police want some time to poke around on the quiet."

Decapitated? Marten was stunned. So that was the reason there'd been no publicity. It also meant someone had been there only moments after he'd fled, seen what had happened and decided to change the makeup of the entire thing. And they had, quickly and efficiently. It made him think what he had before, that the suicide of a woman of Dr. Stephenson's prominence would be far more carefully scrutinized than if she had been simply murdered. The decapitation naturally removed any suspicion of suicide, but to him, the only person who knew the truth of what had happened, it raised the specter of conspiracy. That someone wanted to cover up one crime with another brought the whole Mike Parsons committee thing back in a rush.

"Fadden," he said, "let's get back to Mike Parsons. His subcommittee on intelligence and counterterrorism. What was it focused on? Why no formal witnesses?"

"Because it was a classified investigation."

"Classified?"

"Yes."

"About what?"

"A top-secret apartheid-era South African biological and chemical weapons program long thought to have been dismantled. The CIA had given the committee a checklist of covert weapons programs that foreign governments had previously had in development so in the future, if push came to shove, they wouldn't commit the WMD mistakes we did before the war on Iraq. The South African program was one of them. The committee wanted to be certain it was as dead as the government claimed."

"Was it?"

"From what my sources tell me, yes. They had the top chemical and biological scientist who headed it on the hot seat for three days and finally concluded that the program had been abandoned as officially declared years ago."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning that all the weapons, pathogen strains, documents, and anything else pertinent had been destroyed. That there was no longer anything there."

"What was the man's name, the scientist who headed it?"

"Merriman Foxx. Why, did Caroline Parsons mention him?"

"No."

Marten looked away and they walked on in silence, the domed Capitol looming in front of them, the pedestrian and motorized traffic around them picking up, the daily activity of the seat of the federal government growing exponentially as the lunch hour ended. A moment later Marten thought of two separate things in rapid order.

The first was what Stephenson had said in the dark, icy seconds on Dumbarton Street before she shot herself, apparently taking him for one of the conspirators. You want to send me to the doctor. But you never will. None of you ever will. Never. Ever.

The second was what Caroline had uttered in her sleep-I don't like the white-haired man, she'd said, fearfully ranting about a white-haired man who had come to the clinic where she had been taken after her breakdown following the funerals of her husband and son and the subsequent injection by Dr. Stephenson.

"This scientist, Merriman Foxx," Marten said abruptly, "is he also a medical doctor, a physician?"

"Yeah. Why?"

Marten took a deep breath and then asked, "Does he have white hair?"

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"Does he have white hair?" Marten was emphatic.

Fadden raised his eyebrows. "Yeah. A lot of it. He's sixty years old and has a mop like Albert Einstein's."

"My God," Marten breathed. Immediately the thought came. "Is he still here? Still in Washington?" he asked with urgency.

"For chrissakes, I don't know."

"Can you find when he first came to Washington? How long he was here?"

"Why?"

Marten stopped and took Fadden by the arm. "Can you find out where he is now and the day and date he came to Washington?"

"Who the hell is he in this?"

"I'm not sure, but I want to talk to him. Can you get that information for me?"

"I do, and you go to see him, you're taking me with you."

Marten's eyes glistened. Finally-maybe-he was onto something. "You find him, I'll take you with me. I promise."

18

• ROME, 7 P.M.

The presidential motorcade turned onto via Quirinale in twilight. President Harris could see the huge lighted edifice of the Palazzo del Quirinale, the official residence of the president of Italy, where he would spend the evening in the company of President Mario Tonti.

Regardless of his failures and frustrations with the leaders of France and Germany, Harris was staying the course: the traveling salesman making the rounds of the major capitals of Europe, drumming up goodwill and calling for a new era of transatlantic unity, meeting those countries' leaders on their home soil, where the trees and gardens and neighborhoods were as dear to them as the same things were to him in America.

With him in the presidential limousine were Secretary of State David Chaplin and Secretary of Defense Terrence Langdon, both of whom had been waiting when Air Force One landed at the Champino Military Airport outside Rome. These two men were a show of force and assurance: one to demonstrate that the United States was openly courting a better relationship with the entire European community; the other to make clear that the president was not there hat in hand, that he had his own definitive point of view, especially as it applied to terrorism, the Middle East, and countries covertly developing weapons of mass destruction, as well as other pressing issues-trade, protection of intellectual material, world health, and global warming. In all those things, Harris was realistic but also politically and economically conservative, at least as conservative as the man he had succeeded in office, the late President Charles Cabot.

Not forgotten in all this necessary political "forward motion" was the incident aboard Air Force One on the flight from Berlin. He could still feel the numbing chill of Dr. James Marshall's proposal to assassinate the president of France and the chancellor of Germany. To be replaced with leaders we can trust, now and in the future. Followed by Jake Lowe's bold statement, There are such people, Mr. President. And then Marshall's It can be done, sir, and rather quickly. You'd be surprised.

These were men he'd trusted for years. Both had been instrumental in his election. Yet in the context of what had happened it almost seemed as if they were people he'd never met before, strangers with a dark agenda all their own, urging him to take part in it. That he had fiercely refused was one thing, but that it had been proposed at all troubled him deeply. And the way it had been left-with both men looking at him almost in contempt, and Marshall's last words still echoing in his ears, I think we understand your position, Mr. President-made him think that, despite his outright refusal, in their minds their initiative was far from dead. It frightened him. There was no other way to put it. He'd thought he should bring it up with David Chaplin and Terrence Langdon on the way here, but both secretaries were filling him in on the meetings they had come from, and to bring up something so ominous and far-reaching then didn't seem appropriate, so he decided to hold off until later.

"We're here, Mr. President." The voice of Hap Daniels, his broad-shouldered, curly-haired SAIC (pronounced SACK)-special agent in charge of the Secret Service detail traveling with him-came over the intercom from where Hap rode shotgun in the limousine's front seat. Seconds later the motorcade pulled to a stop in front of the Palazzo del Quirinale. A military band in full dress uniform struck up the United States national anthem, and through a wash of armed men in uniforms and plain clothes, Harris saw the smiling, resplendent Mario Tonti, the president of Italy, step from a red carpet and come forward through the sea of pomp and security to greet him.

19

• NATIONAL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, WASHINGTON, D.C.,

MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR CAROLINE PARSONS, 2:35 P.M.

Nicholas Marten sat near the back of the cathedral listening to the deep velvety voice and gentle words of the distinguished African-American minister who led the service, congressional chaplain Rufus Beck, who was pastor of Caroline's church and had made the call to Dr. Stephenson when Caroline had broken down following the funerals of her husband and son. A man he had met briefly in her hospital room.

Emotionally Marten had done everything he could to divorce himself from the event and from the official stamp the service itself gave, the awful acknowledgment that Caroline was truly dead. To that end he had created his own distraction, which he hoped would somehow bear fruit. It was to continually scan the mourners packing the church in the hope that the white-haired man, Dr. Merriman Foxx, had not yet left Washington and had instead come here to take some sort of perverse pleasure in the results of his work. But if he was here, if he was indeed as Peter Fadden had described him, sixty years old and looking like Einstein, so far Marten hadn't seen him.

Those he did see-and there were more than several hundred-were political figures he recognized from the press or television, and many others whom he did not recognize but who had to have been friends or at least associates of Caroline and her family. Just the size of the gathering gave him a very real sense of how rich and expansive their lives here had been.

On a more personal level he saw Caroline's sister, Katy, and her husband, escorted quickly to the front of the church as they arrived, once again, and in so short a time, making an unbearably tragic flight from Hawaii to Washington.

Marten had no way to know if Caroline had shared any of her fears with her sister. Or if Katy knew that Caroline had asked him to come to Washington to be with her for the last hours of her life. It would have been wholly in character for Caroline to have been mindful of what Katy was going through, caring for their Alzheimer's-debilitated mother in Hawaii and not wanting to add another level of anguish, deciding instead to keep her beliefs about some kind of conspiracy between herself and Marten. But whatever Katy knew or didn't, the question of what to do about her lingered. If he went to her, reminded her who he was, told her a little of what had happened in the years since she knew him in Los Angeles, and then confided what Caroline had told him and showed her the notarized letter she'd had prepared for him, it was all but certain Katy would accompany him to Caroline's law firm and demand that he be allowed access to the Parsons' private papers, thereby breaking the firm's reluctance to give him access to those things.

That was on the one hand. On the other was the idea that his initial investigation had been smothered by someone in the firm powerful enough to be concerned about what he might find. If that were the case, and considering the situation with Dr. Stephenson, had he and Katy showed up to file a protest, there was every chance that before long the same fate the Parsons family had suffered would befall either Katy or himself or both. It made the whole thing dicey, and even now he wasn't sure what to do about it.

"God's love pours out among us. As it pours out for Caroline, and for her husband, Michael, and their son, Charlie," Reverend Beck's voice filtered through the church.

"In the words of the poet Laurence Binyon-

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning

We will remember them.

"Let us pray."

As Reverend Beck's prayer resonated through the church, Marten felt someone slide into the pew beside him. He turned to see a very attractive young woman with short dark hair, dressed respectfully in a black suit. A large digital camera hung from one shoulder, and around her neck was an international press pass with her photograph, her name, and her media affiliation, Agence France-Presse. Marten recognized her as the woman who had accompanied Reverend Beck when he'd visited Caroline in the hospital. He wondered what she was doing there, why she had come to the service. And why she had seated herself next to him.

Then Beck's prayer ended, organ music swelled, and the service was over. Marten saw Beck step down from the pulpit and go over to Caroline's sister and her husband in the front row. Around him people stirred and began to stand. As they did the young woman turned toward him.

"You are Mister Nicholas Marten?" she said with a French accent.

"Yes. Why?" he asked cautiously.

"My name is Demi Picard. I don't mean to intrude, especially under these circumstances, but I wonder if I might have a few moments of your time? It's about Mrs. Parsons."

Marten was puzzled. "What about her?"

"Perhaps we could talk where it is less crowded." She looked toward the large open doors behind them, where people were filing out of the chapel.

Marten studied her carefully. She was tense with anticipation. Her eyes, wide and deep brown, never left his. There was intrigue here-maybe she knew something about Caroline he didn't, or at least something that could help.

"Alright," he said. "Let's go."

20

Marten let her lead the way through the crowd as they walked from the dark of the church into bright afternoon light. Outside, police provided a tight web of security as a long string of cars pulled up one by one to collect the VIP mourners. Behind them and to one side was a gaggle of media satellite trucks. Closer in, television cameras taped the activity while stand-up correspondents reported the event. Clips for the early and late news, Marten thought. And then that would be the end of it, the last public interest in the life of Caroline Parsons.

Demi led them away from the church toward a parking area on the church grounds near Nebraska Avenue. As they went, he caught sight of two familiar figures standing back watching as people left: Metropolitan Police detectives Herbert and Monroe, the man-and-woman team who had questioned him about the "murder" of Lorraine Stephenson. He wondered if by now they too had learned of the white-haired South African scientist Merriman Foxx and were there hoping, as he was, that he might show up at Caroline's service.

"Hey, Marten!" A voice cried out from behind. He turned to see Peter Fadden coming quickly toward them. A moment later he caught up.

"Sorry, I'm running late." He glanced at Demi, then handed Marten a letter-size envelope. "My cell phone number's in there along with some other material you might find interesting. Call me when you get back to your hotel." With that he turned and left, disappearing into the throng still lingering outside the church.

Marten stuck the envelope in his jacket and looked to Demi. "You wanted to talk about Caroline Parsons. What about?"

"I believe you were with her in the last days and hours before she died."

"So were a lot of other people. You included-you came in with Reverend Beck."

"True," she said with a nod, "but most of the time you were alone with her."

"How do you know that? How did you even get my name?"

"I'm a writer and photojournalist doing a photo-essay book on the clergy that minister to prominent politicians. Reverend Beck is one of them. It's why I was with him when he visited the hospital and why I came to the service today. Reverend Beck is pastor of the church where the Parsons family were members. He knew you had been keeping vigil over Mrs. Parsons. He was curious about you and asked one of the nurses. I was there when he learned who you were and that you were a close friend of hers."

Marten squinted in the glare of the afternoon light. "Just what is it you want?"

Demi took a step closer. She was on edge and anticipatory, even more than she had been when she approached him inside the church. "She knew she was dying."

"Yes." Marten had no idea where she was going with her questioning or why she had sought him out.

"You and she must have talked."

"A little."

"And under the circumstances she might have told you things she would not have told others."

"Maybe."

Suddenly Marten was on his guard. Who was she and what was she trying to find out? What Caroline knew or had suspected about Dr. Stephenson and what had been done to her? Or what she felt had happened to her husband and son? Maybe even about the white-haired man, Merriman Foxx, if he was indeed the person Caroline had been referring to.

"Just exactly what is it you want to know?" he said flatly.

"Did she mention-?" Demi Picard hesitated.

Just then Marten saw a dark gray Ford turn the far corner in the parking lot and come toward them. He looked back to Demi. "Did she mention what?"

"The"-she hesitated-"witches."

"Witches?"

"Yes."

The Ford was closer now and slowing. Marten swore to himself. He knew the car and the two people in it, and the way it was slowing told him they had no intention of driving past. Quickly his eyes went to Demi. "Witches?" he pressed her. "What are you talking about?"

Then the Ford was there, pulling up and stopping, its doors opening. Detective Herbert got out from behind the wheel, Monroe from the front passenger seat.

Demi glanced at the police. "I have to go, I'm sorry," she said abruptly, then turned and walked quickly back toward the church.

Marten took a breath, then looked at the detectives and tried to smile. "What can I do for you?"

"This." Monroe snapped a handcuff over one wrist and then the other.

"For what?" Marten was outraged.

Herbert started him toward the car. "We let you attend Mrs. Parsons's service. That's the only favor you get."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"It means we're going for a little ride."

"A ride where?"

"You'll find out."

21

• BRITISH AIRWAYS FLIGHT 0224, WASHINGTON,

DULLES, TO HEATHROW, LONDON, 6:50 P.M.

Marten watched the hardscape and parkland of Washington dissolve to a twilight sky as the plane banked steeply and headed out over the Atlantic. Handcuffs gone, he was crammed into a window seat of three-across seating in a sold-out coach section and arm to elbow with his two companions, a just-married, hand-holding, cooing couple who hadn't taken their eyes off each other since they'd buckled in. And who, he guessed, weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of three hundred pounds each.

There had been a standby line of at least twenty, but intrepid detectives Herbert and Monroe had found a seat for him anyway. Their entire MO had been quick and slick. Stopping by his hotel, letting him collect his personal belongings, then whisking him to Dulles International with barely a dozen words said between them. The few they used had been simple and succinct. No interpretation needed. "Get out of Washington and stay out."

They had waited with him at the British Airways gate right up until boarding time and then put him on the plane themselves just to make sure he didn't decide to get off and venture back into their fair city at the last minute. The procedure wasn't unusual; cops did it all the time to get rid of people they couldn't charge with a crime but didn't want around either. The process was made easier if that person was from another city, state, or, as in his case, country.

He hadn't been overjoyed at being kicked out, not with his emotions still there and all the questions still unanswered. On the other hand, the "little ride" the detectives had promised could just as well have been back to police headquarters, especially if they'd found someone who had seen him confront Dr. Stephenson outside her house.

By now they might well have found her head and wanted to talk to him about it, maybe even take him down to the morgue to see it and watch his reaction. But they hadn't. Instead they'd simply tossed him out of the country. Just why he wasn't sure, but he suspected they'd learned something about his relationship with Caroline Parsons, the hospital part anyway, and the letter she had written giving him access to her family's personal files. Whether they were concerned that he might become an awkward kink in their investigation into Dr. Stephenson's death, or if word had come from whoever was pulling strings in Caroline's law firm and wanted him as far out of the picture as possible, there was no way to know. Nor was there a way to know if that same someone was connected to Caroline's death, or the deaths of her husband and son, or the decapitation of an already dead Lorraine Stephenson. Of course none of it meant he couldn't just turn around once he got to London and come right back to continue the investigation on his own.

And, police or no police, he might well have if after the plane took off he hadn't remembered the envelope Peter Fadden had given him outside the church and elbowed himself free of the bulging, cooing couple next to him to take it out and open it.

What he'd found inside was what the reporter had promised: his Washington Post business card giving his cell phone number and his e-mail address; the day Dr. Merriman Foxx arrived in Washington, Monday, March 6; and some highly interesting background on Dr. Foxx and the top-secret operations he had headed as brigadier of South Africa's notorious Tenth Medical Brigade. Operations that had included covert international shopping expeditions for pathogens, or disease-causing organisms, and the hardware to disperse them; plans for epidemics that could be spread undetected through black communities to devastate them; special poisons that would cause heart failure, cancer, and sterility; and the development of a kind of "stealth" anthrax strain that would be able to circumvent the intricate tests used to recognize the disease. A major aim was to develop devices to kill opponents of apartheid without a trace.

On top of that Fadden had added something else: the date the doctor left town, Wednesday, March 29, and his current whereabouts, or at least where he was thought to have gone following the secret subcommittee hearings in Washington. It was his home.

200 Triq San Gwann

Valletta,

Malta

Phone #: 243555

This last was what had made Marten change his plans. For now, at least, he would not be returning to Washington once he got to London. Nor would he immediately be going back to his pressing work at his landscape design firm in Manchester. Instead, he would be on the first available flight to Malta.