The Machiavelli Covenant

52

• MADRID, 1:45 A.M.

"I don't know if it means anything, sir," Hap Daniels heard the voice of Secret Service intelligence specialist Sandra Rodriguez through his headset. "It's a pattern NSA analytical software picked up earlier this evening in Barcelona and was just evaluated."

"What pattern?" Daniels snapped. He'd been living on hope, black coffee, and adrenaline in the seemingly interminable hours since the president was first reported missing. Under emergency orders issued by the office of the vice president and overseen by George Kellner, CIA chief of station Madrid, the Secret Service had taken over a high level command post in a nondescript warehouse in Poblenou, an area of old factories and storehouses; a command post originally constructed by the CIA for their use in the event of a "terrorist issue" involving the U.S. embassy.

It was now approaching nineteen hours since the president had gone missing, and Daniels-encircled by the broad-shouldered bulldog Bill Strait, his deputy special agent in charge; the pale, expressionless Ted Langway, the Secret Service's assistant director in from Washington, CIA-Madrid Station Chief George Kellner, and a half-dozen other Secret Service presidential detail supervisors-sat in the darkened central control room of that converted CIA warehouse in the glow of dozens of computer screens manned by Secret Service and CIA technical analysts culling information from what was now a massive top-secret worldwide intelligence operation.

Standing in the background like a steel shadow and pacing back and forth as if his wife were about to give birth and was taking too long to do it, was the president's chief political adviser, Jake Lowe. BlackBerry in hand and wearing a headset connected to whatever line Hap Daniels was on at the time, Lowe had another line ready at voice command that would instantly connect him to a secure phone at the United States embassy a half dozen miles away, where National Security Adviser Dr. James Marshall and White House Chief of Staff Tom Curran had established what they called "a working war room." There they were connected by secure phone to the basement of the White House in Washington, where Vice President Hamilton Rogers, Secretary of State David Chaplin, Secretary of Defense Terrence Langdon, and Air Force General Chester Keaton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had set up a war room of their own.

"We've got a record of twenty-seven phone calls placed between 2000 hours and 2040 hours this evening from six separate pay telephones all within a two-mile semicircle of the Barcelona-Sants Station," Rodriguez said. "They were paid for with a phone card purchased at a tobacco shop on Carrer de Robrenyo."

Barcelona had been a watch point ever since a small fire had broken out at a newspaper kiosk inside the city's main railroad station early Friday evening. A fire, officials had quickly determined, that had been purposely set but with no apparent reason-theft, vandalism, or as a terrorist act-and that Spanish CNP officers on the scene were now calling a "diversionary tactic." But "diversionary" for what purpose? The only answer seemed to be that because the fire had erupted near an exit where the Spanish police were checking identifications someone inside the station-maybe the president, but more likely someone with a criminal record or on a terrorist watch list-had been trying to get past the police checkpoint. If so it may have worked because the officers at the door had, for a very brief time, left their post to investigate the fire and commotion inside.

"What's the connection to POTUS?" Daniels pushed, weariness and frustration beginning to override his generally composed demeanor.

"That's why I said I don't know if it means anything, sir."

"If what means anything? What the hell are you talking about?"

"The pattern, sir. The calls were placed to local hotels. One after the other as if someone were trying to locate a hotel guest but didn't know in which hotel the person was staying."

"Get me the name of the tobacco shop where the card was purchased, the numbers and locations of the phones the calls were placed from, and the names and numbers of the hotels that were called."

"Yes, sir."

"Thank you," Daniels punched a number on the keyboard in front of him. "Find out if Spanish intelligence did an intercept of public telephones in Barcelona between 2000 and 2040 tonight. If so, see if they have a voice record of a series of calls made to area hotels in that time frame. I want to know if the calls were made by a man or a woman, what they were about, and what language the caller spoke in."

"Yes, sir."

"And do it fast."

"Yes, sir."

53

• BARCELONA, RIVOLI JARDÍN HOTEL, 2:15 A.M.

Still party time. Horns, cars, motorcycles, unending traffic. People crowding the sidewalks. The sound of Brazilian and Argentine jazz filtering in through the double-glazed windows.

President Harris was asleep on the bed with Marten curled up on a small couch nearby when the chirp of Marten's cell phone woke them both.

"Who is it?" Harris was instantly awake and alert in the dark.

"I don't know."

The phone chirped again

"You better answer."

Marten picked the phone off a small table beside him and clicked on, "Hello."

"It's Demi," her voice was hushed and at the same time charged with immediacy. "You checked out. Where are you? I need to see you right away. I don't want to talk over the phone."

The president turned on a small bedside lamp just as Marten slid a hand over the telephone's receiver, "It's a woman. She wants to see me now. Four hours ago I would have killed for this call."

Harris smiled.

"It's not that," he took his hand away and spoke into the phone. "Are you still at the Regente Majestic?"

"Yes."

"Hold on." Again he covered the phone and looked to Harris. "This has to do with Caroline's death. The woman's name is Demi Picard. She's a French journalist traveling with congressional chaplain Rufus Beck. They're both here in Barcelona." Marten hesitated for the smallest moment. "I don't know if you're aware but the reverend is a close friend of Dr. Merriman Foxx."

"The Merriman Foxx?"

"Yes," Marten nodded, then spoke into the phone. "Give me your cell number, I'll call you back." Marten scribbled a number on a bedside table scratch pad. "Five minutes."

With that he clicked off and looked to the president, telling him what he had told Peter Fadden: that he had followed Foxx to his home in Malta and arranged to meet him by pretending to be a member of Congress-woman Baker's staff who needed some questions finalized before the subcommittee report was made final; that he met him in a restaurant and that Beck, another woman, and Demi Picard were with him; that he pressed him for information about his bio-weapons program and brought up the names of Caroline Parsons and her doctor, Lorraine Stephenson; and that he made up a story that Mike Parsons had left a memo questioning the veracity of his testimony. And then Foxx's angry reaction to everything.

"I found out early the next morning that both he and Reverend Beck had suddenly left Malta for places unknown. Ms. Picard was leaving too and wanted nothing to do with me when I questioned her about it. I found out where she was going and followed her here to Barcelona.

"You said you knew Caroline had been murdered, Mr. President. I wonder if you know Foxx was behind it, he and the same Dr. Stephenson he denied knowing. They inoculated her with some kind of bacteria that killed her. I'm all but certain it was one of his experiments, a piece of his bio-weapons program that was supposed to be dead but wasn't the same thing Mike Parsons's committee was investigating when he and his son were killed. How Beck is involved I don't know, but he and Foxx are meeting somewhere near here soon, maybe even tomorrow. Demi knows more about it or she wouldn't be calling like this." Marten hesitated, trying to decide how to put the next part. He didn't have to, the president did it for him.

"You're thinking Dr. Foxx is part of the coup against me."

"Maybe, but there's no proof. All I know is that he was at the center of the subcommittee hearings denying his program was still in existence while at the same time he was still working his tricks on a live human being-Caroline Parsons."

"How is this Picard woman involved?"

"Supposedly she used Reverend Beck to get an introduction to Foxx. Her sister disappeared from Malta two years ago and she thought Foxx might open some doors that would help her to find out what happened, at least that's what she tells me."

"So she's incidental in all this."

"Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. But it's Foxx who's central here. He not only knows the how but the why about Caroline's death, and both of those answers may have a lot to do with the things you're up against."

The president looked away, trying to digest it all. "If you're right, it's the part of the package that's missing, the specifics of what they're planning to do. I know I should be surprised about Chaplain Beck, but nothing surprises me now."

He turned back and Marten could see the anguish in his eyes. "They are planning something horrendous, Mr. Marten. More terrible, I think, than either you or I could imagine. Part of it I know, the rest I don't. The whole thing came out of the blue. It's a major breakdown on my part. I should have known something was happening and seen through it; I didn't. As I said earlier, the timetable for me to do anything about it is incredibly short. If I'm caught, it's nonexistent."

Marten nodded toward the phone, "Maybe she can help. How much I can't guess, but it's more than we have right now."

Harris stared at him. "You said she wanted nothing to do with you. What makes you think you can trust her now?"

"That is a multimillion-dollar question."

"Can you trust her, Mr. Marten?"

"When I left my hotel in Malta I was tailed all the way to Barcelona by a young man. At the airport I was handed off to someone else. He was the dead man in the newspaper photo. He followed Demi and me to a restaurant where we went to talk. Afterward I tried to confront and question him. He ran away and I chased him. That was when he ran in front of the truck."

"You think it was Foxx who had you followed?"

"Yes, to see who I might be reporting to."

"And you're suggesting this Picard woman had something to do with it?"

"That's what I don't know. She might be legitimate and a great help to us or she might bring the whole mountain down. For me it's one thing, for you, Mr. President, it's something else entirely. I guess what I'm saying-the call is yours to make."

Marten saw President Harris hesitate for the slightest moment and then make up his mind. "Ask her to come here now," he said, "but to tell no one where she is going. Give her the room number and tell her to come directly to it. Say nothing about me."

"You're certain?"

"Yes, I'm certain."

54

• 2:25 A.M.

Room lights out, Marten stood by the window watching for Demi. Below, the street remained a swirl of nightlife. Traffic at a crawl, the sidewalks filled with pedestrians, music floating from cars and open doorways. For Spain, for Barcelona, the night was still a pup.

Marten could hear the shower running in the bathroom, then heard it stop as the president turned off the water. A short while earlier an embarrassed John Henry Harris had asked to borrow Marten's toothbrush, and he'd given it to him without thought. Then he'd asked to use his razor to shave, but Marten suggested he let his beard continue to grow as another level of cover and the president had agreed.

• 2:27 A.M.

Still no sign of Demi.

Marten looked back to the room. Not fifteen feet away, in the confines of the bathroom, the president of the United States was drying himself and dressing, preparing for what was to come next. The whole situation was impossible, even absurd, but it was happening nonetheless. The truth of it made Marten think of his brief conversation with the president just before he'd gone in to shower.

"You told me Dr. Foxx had been directly involved with Caroline's death, that he'd given her some kind of bacteria that had killed her," the president had said. "How did you know that?"

"Caroline had been injected with something by Dr. Stephenson after she broke down following the funeral of her husband and son. She woke up in a clinic where Foxx was, and he seemed to be overseeing her treatment. It was her sense and fear that either Stephenson had given her whatever poisoned her or that Foxx had done it himself at the clinic."

"Sense and fear?"

"Yes."

"Sense and fear mean uncertainty. You were certain when you told me. Why?"

"Because of what Dr. Stephenson told me just before she died. She thought I was one of 'them,' whoever 'they' are, your 'friends' maybe, and that I was going to take her to 'the doctor,' as she put it. She meant Merriman Foxx."

"Just before she died?" the president had stared at him, incredulous. "You were there when she was murdered? When she was decapitated?"

For a long moment Marten said nothing. He was the only one in the world who knew the truth. Then he realized that now, at this point, there was no reason to hold it back, especially from the man who faced him. "She wasn't murdered, Mr. President. She committed suicide."

"Suicide?" The president was stunned.

"On the street near her home. It was night. I waited for her to come home and was trying to question her about what had happened to Caroline. She was frightened, I think more about being taken to 'the doctor' and what he might do to her than anything. She had a pistol. I thought she was going to shoot me. Instead she put it in her mouth and pulled the trigger.

"There was nothing I could do, and I didn't want to explain things to the police because then Foxx would find out about it. So I got out of there fast. The decapitation had to have been done shortly afterward. It meant someone had been watching her."

The president was clearly puzzled. "Why do something like that when she was already dead?"

"I asked myself that and came to the conclusion that a suicide by a physician of her prominence coming so soon after the death of one of her high-profile patients might raise eyebrows and have people start asking questions. Especially when it happened so soon after the deaths of that patient's congressman husband and their son. Murder is different. It's impersonal, it could happen to anyone. Besides there's no way to cover up a suicide done like that, Mr. President. It means whoever did it understood that and simply took her head."

"My God," the president breathed.

"That's what I said."

• 2:30 A.M.

Marten looked back to the street.

Still no sign of Demi.

55

• U.S. SECRET SERVICE COMMAND POST, MADRID, 2:30 A.M.

"A woman made the Barcelona hotel calls, sir." Again the voice of Secret Service intelligence specialist Sandra Rodriguez came through Hap Daniels's headset. He was standing in front of a computer screen in the CIA warehouse clicking through an endless stream of reports from the mass of intelligence agencies trying and failing to locate the president.

"She sounded young and was speaking Spanish with a Danish accent. It took a while for Spanish intelligence to run the tapes and make some sense of it."

"What was she trying to find out?" Daniels pressed her.

"She was looking for a man, a hotel employee or guest, she didn't specify. All she had was a name, a Señor Nicholas Marten. Marten with an e not an i."

"Marten?" Hap Daniels said abruptly and looked up. Jake Lowe was staring at him from across the room, Daniels turned back. "Do we know if she located this Nicholas Marten?"

"Yes, sir. He's at the Rivoli Jardín Hotel. Barcelona, 080002."

"Thank you."

Jake Lowe had turned his back to the room and was talking by secure phone to National Security Adviser Jim Marshall in the war room at the U.S. embassy in Madrid.

"We may have something hot," Lowe said lowly and with urgency. "Spanish intel has located a Nicholas Marten at a hotel in Barcelona. Someone made a number of calls trying to find out where he was."

"Marten?" Marshall perked. "The same Marten connected to the Caroline Parsons circumstance?"

"Not certain."

"Do we know who was trying to find him?"

"A woman. We don't know who she is or why she was looking for him. Or even if it's the Nicholas Marten. But if it is, the president certainly would recognize him; he saw him in Parsons's hospital room then asked for more information on him later, and we delivered it."

"Mr. Lowe," Hap Daniels's voice came through a separate channel in his headset and he turned to see Daniels motioning to him, "you might want to look at this."

Immediately Lowe crossed the room to look at the computer screen Daniels, Station Chief Kellner, and Secret Service Assistant Director Ted Langway were staring at. On it was the newspaper photograph of Marten taken on the Barcelona street-the same photo the president had used to identify him.

"From yesterday's special late edition of the Barcelona La Vanguardia. That is Marten," Daniels said definitively.

"You sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure. I was with the president when we saw him at University Hospital."

"We have a confirm on Marten," Lowe said to Marshall through his headset, then looked to Daniels. "Locate him. But that's all. Just locate him and watch him. Don't let him know we're onto him."

Abruptly Daniels turned to Kellner. "You have assets in place in Barcelona?"

"Yes."

"Put them to work."

"Right."

"Hap," Lowe's eyes found Daniels's. "What's your gut tell you? Is the president with him?"

"I want to say yes, but there's no way to know until we get a confirm."

"I want us to do that ourselves."

Daniels's eyebrows furrowed in puzzlement. "I'm not sure I understand."

"We don't know his physical or psychological condition. What we do know is that he's ill and so whatever happens has to be done with extreme delicacy. When we go in it needs to be with people he will instantly recognize. Not strange faces, not CIA or Spanish intelligence," he glanced at Assistant Director Ted Langway, "not even you, Mr. Langway. I'd suggest you stay in Madrid." Lowe looked back to Daniels, "I don't want to make it any worse for him than it already is. If you want a direct order I can get it from the vice president."

"I won't need it, sir."

"Dr. Marshall will want to be there too."

"Dr. Marshall?"

"Yes."

Hap Daniels's eyes held Lowe's for the briefest second,

"Yes, sir," he said and then turned and walked away, speaking into his headset as he went.

"I want a lead car, an armored van set up as an ambulance with two doctors and two EMT techs, and three security tail cars ready in Barcelona within the hour. Have a car pick up Dr. Marshall at the embassy and take him to the airport."

Again he looked to Station Chief Kellner. "Can you get Spanish intelligence to facilitate priority air clearance for a flight to Barcelona?"

"I think so."

"Hap," Lowe was looking directly at him. "How soon can we be in the air?"

"We get clearance, wheels up in twenty minutes."

"Good."

56

• BARCELONA, RIVOLI JARDÍN HOTEL, 3:00 A.M.

Marten pulled back the curtain in the semidarkness in time to glimpse Demi Picard dodge through traffic and cross the street coming toward the hotel. She wore a light-colored trench coat with a large purse thrown over one shoulder and had a floppy hat pulled low over her forehead. If he hadn't been looking for her she would have been difficult to recognize, which was probably the idea.

Marten let the curtain go and stepped back from the window just as President Harris came out of the bathroom, pulling on his clear-lensed eyeglasses.

"She's just crossed the street. She should be here in a few minutes," Marten said. "How do you want to play it?"

The president stopped and looked at him. He was still without his toupee and had put back on the same khaki pants, blue sport shirt, and brown jacket he had been wearing when Marten first saw him in the room several hours earlier.

"Mr. Marten," he said with an urgency Marten hadn't heard before. "I knew when I came to you I was taking a chance, but I had to find a place out of sight to rest, if even for a short time. Standing in the shower I had a chance to collect my thoughts. It's now three in the morning. Spanish federal police boarded the train I took from Madrid to Barcelona late this afternoon. Very luckily I got away without them recognizing me. The same as when I managed to avoid them in the train station here. The hunt for me, secretive as it will be, will be massive. I know the procedures and agencies the Secret Service will use in trying to bring me in. That means there's every chance that by now they will have some idea where I've gone. It's possible they may even have intercepted the phone calls my female friend made in trying to find you. It won't be long before they put it all together and learn where I am. It means I need to get out of here right away, and the sooner the better."

"To go where?"

"If I told you and they found you, believe me when I say you would tell them."

"Then I can't let them find me, can I?"

The president studied him carefully. "Mr. Marten, you've helped a great deal already. If you try to do more you'll be getting in dangerously over your head."

"I'm already in over my head," Marten half smiled. "I'm probably going to get fired from my job too." The smile vanished, "If they come here looking for you they'll know who I am anyway. You asked for my help, Mr. President, and you still have it," Marten paused, then went on. "Besides, I've come this far because of what happened to Caroline Parsons and in a way so have you. If you're going, I am too."

"You're certain?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then I thank you most gratefully, Mr. Marten. But I also want you to understand something." The urgency in the president's voice was now compounded by a look of almost unbearable anguish, as if for the first time he realized the true enormity of his situation. "Out here, like this, I have nothing of the power of my office to draw upon. I have no authority at all. If they catch me and bring me back they will kill me. That makes me just some poor fellow on the run with the clock ticking down, and at the same time trying to stay alive and keep his country and I think an ungodly number of other countries afloat as well. To do that I have to find out what my 'friends' are planning to do and what they have the ability to do, and then find a way to stop it, whatever it is. Dr. Foxx seems to be a key figure here, maybe even its prime architect. Your friend, this Demi Picard, may be able to help us find him. She might even know where he is."

"You mean you want to take her with us."

"Mr. Marten, I've said time is very short. If she knows something about Dr. Foxx, I need to learn what it is. As I said before, I have probably lingered here too long as it is. So yes, dangerous and foolhardy as it might be if she is working for Foxx, I want to take her with us. That is if she'll go."

"I don't doubt that she'll go, because she wants very much to talk to me. But if she does, you'll run a great risk of having her realize who you are."

"I run the same risk here. If she can get us to Dr. Foxx or even near enough so we can find him ourselves, it's worth the chance," the president paused and his voice became nearly a whisper. "Mr. Marten, it means that much."

Abruptly there was a sharp knock at the door. A second knock followed. "It's Demi," she said from the hallway.

Marten looked at the president, "You're sure?"

"Yes."

Marten nodded, then opened the door. Demi came in quickly and he closed it. In almost the same instant he felt her hand on his arm. "Who is he?" She was staring at President Harris.

"I, uh-" Marten stammered. This was something they hadn't discussed at all. How to introduce the president to her.

"Bob," Harris took care of the situation himself, smiling and extending his hand. "Bob Rader, I'm an old friend of Nicholas. We bumped into each other unexpectedly."

She stared at him for a heartbeat longer, just enough to digest his presence, then looked back to Marten. "We have to talk. Alone. Now."

"Demi, Bob knows what's going on. Whatever you have to say you can say in front of him."

"No, it's something else."

"What?"

Her eyes flashed from one man to the other, "Four people came in off the street and into the hotel when I did. One was a hotel guest who rode up in the elevator with me. The other three, two men and a woman, went to the front desk. One of them carried a copy of La Van-guardia, the edition of the newspaper your photograph was in. The one taken with our friend in the yellow polo shirt from the restaurant, the dead man you were kneeling beside in the street."

"So?"

"I think they were police."

57

• RIVOLI JARDÍN HOTEL, LOBBY, 3:07 A.M.

"¿Es este Señor Marten?" Is this Mr. Marten? Barcelona police plainclothes detective Iuliana Ortega demanded, showing Marten's newspaper photo to a young, razor-thin night desk clerk. He looked at it and then to the two men behind her watching him, plain-clothes detectives Alfonso Leon and Sanzo Tarrega.

Outside were ten more undercover officers. Two each in cars watching the building's two street-level public entrances, two more in a car parked at the rear of the building near a service/delivery entrance. The other four were on the rooftop of an apartment building across the street, two with night-vision binoculars, the others were sharpshooters armed with.50 caliber Barrett sniper rifles fitted with night-vision scopes. The first pair watched the street below, the second, the window of room 408.

In all there were thirteen card-carrying members of Guàrdia Urbana, the Barcelona police, yet none of them were what they pretended to be. The six in the stakeout cars were special agents from GEO, Grupo Especial de Operaciones, Spain's elite counterterrorism corps; the others, those across the street on the roof and detectives Ortega, Leon and Tarrega were CIA-Madrid Station Chief Kellner's Barcelona "assets," CIA agents operating with the permission of the Barcelona police and Spanish intelligence.

"I asked you if this is Señor Marten." Detective Ortega pressed the clerk in Spanish once more, gesturing to Marten's newspaper photograph and trying to ignore the loud, pulsating Cuban jazz spilling from the hotel's Jamboree Club on the far side of the lobby.

"Sí," the young man nodded, his eyes darting nervously between Detective Ortega and the men behind her. "Sí."

"Another man is with him," she said definitively.

The clerk nodded again. Clearly he had no idea what this was about or what was going on.

Detective Tarrega moved in. "They are both in Señor Marten's room now?"

"Yes, I think," the clerk said nervously. "I can't swear to it, because I've been busy. But they would have to pass by the desk to leave, and I didn't see them. I've been here all night. The manager made me work a double shift. I didn't ask for the extra time, he just told me that was what I was doing."

"This other man. Who is he?" Detective Ortega pressed. "What is his name?"

"I don't know. He said he was Señor Marten's uncle. I let him into the room myself."

"What does he look like?"

"Like somebody's uncle," the clerk grinned sheepishly.

"Answer the question, please," Ortega demanded. "What does he look like?"

"Old-well not too old, but a little. Almost bald, with glasses."

"Bald?"

"Almost, yes."

Detective Tarrega glanced at Detective Leon and nodded toward the elevator, then looked back to the clerk. "Please give us a key to Marten's room."

"I-it's against hotel pol-" the clerk started to argue, then quickly decided against it. Anxiously he picked up a blank electronic key, programmed it, and handed it to Tarrega.

Abruptly Tarrega looked at Iuliana Ortega, "Cover here. We're going up."

• 3:12 A.M.

The fourth-floor elevator door slid open and Tarrega and Leon stepped out. Seconds later they had taken up positions at either end of the hallway where they could clearly see the door to room 408.

They knew 408 was Marten's room. Not because they had asked the clerk but because they had hacked into the hotel's reservation system before they arrived and confirmed it. Confirmed too that Marten had made no calls from 408's telephone or ordered anything from room service. To them and to the agents outside, and for all intents, Nicholas Marten and his balding "guest" were still in the room.

58

• U.S. ARMY CHINOOK HELICOPTER, TWENTY-ONE

MINUTES OUT OF MADRID EN ROUTE

TO BARCELONA, 3.l6 A.M.

"Bald?" Hap Daniels took the radio call over the roar of the Chinook's engines. Immediately he looked to Jake Lowe and National Security Adviser James Marshall buckled into seats across from him.

"Assets are reporting a man was let into Marten's room claiming to be his uncle. He was bald. Or almost bald. Unless the POTUS shaved his head, we've got the wrong man."

"Maybe he did shave his head," Lowe glanced at Marshall, then looked back to Daniels. "Keep the assets where they are. Bald or not, treat the situation as if he is POTUS."

"When do we get there?" Marshall asked.

"Wheels down at Barcelona police headquarters at 03:40 hours. Another ten minutes to the hotel."

• CHANTILLY, FRANCE, 3:25 A.M.

Victor was nestled in dark woods three-quarters of a mile from the Hippodrome de Chantilly alongside a turf practice track for the Chantilly racetrack's thoroughbreds called Coeur de la Forêt, the Heart of the Forest. It was still more than three and half hours before his targets would come by, yet even in the dark and damp of the woods Victor was comfortable and content.

They had flown him as promised first-class from Madrid to Paris. After that he'd done as instructed: taken a taxi from Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport to Gare du Nord Railway Station and from there a train to the town of Chantilly, where he'd checked into a room reserved for him at the Hotel Chantilly and where the M14 rifle and ammunition he would need-packed inside a locked golf bag with his name on the luggage tag and forwarded by rail from a hotel in Nice-were waiting. After that he'd taken a stroll in the woods, found the Coeur de la Forêt practice track and selected the spot where he was now and from where he would shoot when the jockeys worked out their thoroughbreds just after dawn.

• 3:27 A.M.

"Victor," Richard's soft and reassuring voice came through his headset.

"Yes, Richard."

"Are you in place?"

"Yes, Richard."

"Is everything alright? Are you warm enough? Do you have everything you need?"

"Yes, Richard."

"Any questions?"

"No, Richard."

"Then, good luck."

"Thank you, Richard. Everything will be fine."

"I know that, Victor. I know that very well."

Victor heard Richard click off, and he settled back into the leaves. He was at ease, even happy. The dark forest and night sounds around him, even the dewy dampness that had settled on everything, felt natural and inviting, as if this was a part of the world-so far away and so very different from the desert scrub of Arizona where he had spent his entire life until they'd found him-where he truly belonged.

• 3:30 A.M.

A moth fluttered down and touched his face, and Victor reached up gently and brushed it away, careful not to harm it. He cared deeply for living things and had all his life, and all his life he had been chastised for it; too sensitive, too emotional, a crybaby, a mama's boy he'd been called, even by his own family. The names hurt deeply and suggested a weakness a male should not have, and as a teenager and later as an adult he had tried to deliberately bury them. Fistfights and trouble in school; later, bar fights and assault-and-battery charges, now and again minor jail time. He didn't care-he was as tough and masculine as any situation called for, as tough and masculine as he needed to be. It was a pretense Richard had picked up on after their first few telephone conversations.

In doing so he had made Victor realize there was nothing wrong with how he felt and that those same emotions were shared by hundreds, thousands, even millions of other men. Certainly it was hurtful when people close to him criticized him for it, but it was nothing compared to the things others were doing in the world. Richard was talking about people who saw little value in life at all except as it furthered their own ends. Terrorists, killers, whom the world paid lip-service to fighting but with few exceptions had little effect in stopping, even with the use of massive armies.

It was then Richard had asked if he would be interested in joining an underground movement of freedom fighters dedicated to protecting the American homeland by defeating these people and their organizations around the world, and he had agreed immediately.

The man he had killed coming off the train in Washington, Richard had told him several days beforehand, was a young baseball player from Central America. But he was also a member of a terrorist organization setting up sleeper cells in the corridor between Washington and New York and was leaving the country the next day to report to his handlers in Venezuela to arrange to bring more of their people and money into the U.S. The authorities knew about it but, because of their bureaucratic system with its layers of authority, had done nothing to stop him. It was necessary something be done before he left the country, and Victor had.

It was the same in Madrid when Richard had insisted that he walk through Atocha Station and picture the horror the terrorists had done there. It was an act of terror that should have, and could have, been stopped long before it happened.

Following the president both in Berlin and Madrid had been a simple exercise. Richard wanted him to see firsthand how easy it was for anyone to get close enough to kill him despite the heavy security. It was why he was here in Chantilly now, not just to test his shooting skills but also because the jockeys were part of a terrorist faction setting up in northern France. The idea was to take them down, little by little, one by one and by whatever means. This was war, and if no one else could fight it properly, people like Victor and Richard would.

So far Victor had played his part well. They valued his skills and dedication and told him so. To him that was most important of all.

• 3:35 A.M.

Victor put out a gloved hand and drew the M14 closer, letting it rest comfortably in the crook of his arm. He had only to rest and wait until the horsemen came by just before seven.

59

• BARCELONA, POLICE HEADQUARTERS, 3:40 A.M.

In a storm of flying dust and a deafening roar the U.S. Army Chinook helicopter touched down on the Guàrdia Urbana helipad. Instantly the engines shut down and the doors slid open. Seconds later Hap Daniels, his deputy Bill Strait, Jake Lowe, Dr. James Marshall, and four other Secret Service agents jumped out. Ducking beneath still churning rotors they went to three unmarked cars, their doors open, waiting on the edge of the tarmac. In an instant the men were inside, the doors slammed closed, and the cars screeched off.

• RIVOLI JARDÍN HOTEL, 3:45 A.M.

Music and traffic filled the streets as if it were midday. Revelers came and went through the hotel's two main entrances as if the Rivoli Jardín were hosting a rolling citywide party, the center of which was the music pulsating from the Jamboree Club at the end of the lobby.

So far none of the six Spanish GEO special agents posted in the unmarked cars outside had reported seeing either the man identified as Nicholas Marten or his balding "uncle" leave the building. Nor had the assets on the roof of the building across the street seen any activity inside the drawn curtains of a darkened room 408. The only illumination coming from it at all seemed to emanate from a dim hallway or bathroom light that had been on since they arrived. Nothing had changed either for the CIA assets acting as Barcelona police detectives Tarrega and Leon stationed in the corridor outside room 408. The same was true for the female asset calling herself Iuliana Ortega on watch in the lobby. Bottom line, if their two "men of interest" had been in the room when they arrived, they were still there now.

The Jamboree Club was smoky and sweltering, packed wall to wall with mostly young and sweaty dancers. In the last hours the Cuban jazz had given way to Brazilian bossa nova and then to Argentine jazz.

"Vino blanco otra vez, por favor." White wine again, please. "Bob," as President Harris had introduced himself to Demi, smiled at the young waitress and motioned for her to refill their drinks, then watched as she twisted away through the dancers toward the bar.

At 3:07 A.M. Demi had alerted them to the police downstairs. By 3:08 Marten had shoved his electronic notebook, tape recorder, toiletries, and other belongings into his traveling bag and thrown it over his shoulder. At 3:09 they were out the door and down the fire stairs at the end of the corridor. At 3:11 they entered the hotel lobby from a side hallway near the Jamboree Club and stopped.

"There," Demi said, pointing out Iuliana Ortega, the woman she had seen enter the hotel with the two men at the same time she had. She was sitting in an overstuffed lobby chair with a clear view of both the front entrance from the street and the elevators as if she were waiting for someone.

"Do you see the two men that were with her?" Bob asked.

"No."

The president looked at Marten. "They aren't police," he said quietly, then nodded toward the Jamboree Club. "It's as good a place as any."

At 3:13 they found a table and sat down. Quickly the waitress arrived and the president ordered white wine for the three of them. As the waitress left he took a napkin and made a note on it, then folded it and looked at Marten and Demi.

"By now they will have learned which room Mr. Marten is in and where they assume I am, since the clerk who let me in will have told them. The men will have gone up and be covering it, but they won't go in until the big guns arrive."

Marten leaned in, "There's a side entrance on the far side of the lobby, why don't we just go out that way?"

"There will be more outside," the president said quietly, "and watching all the entrances."

"How do you know all this?" Demi was looking at Bob carefully. Something was going on here and she didn't like it. "Who are you?"

"Bob," he said flatly.

Just then the waitress came back with their drinks. Marten paid her and she left. At the same time an exuberant voice came over the club's PA system announcing in Catalan: "Please welcome sizzling Basque singer-songwriter Fermín Murguruza!"

With that a spotlight came on and the handsome Murguruza bounded onstage singing. The audience went crazy. In seconds people were on their feet dancing as if everything else in their lives had been forgotten. It was a moment the president used to slip Marten the napkin he had written on. Marten pulled it into his lap and unfolded it. On it the president had scrawled:

The woman is CIA, probably the men too-Secret Service imminent!

Marten felt his pulse quicken and looked to the president. As he did, he heard Demi's breathless exclamation.

"Oh, mon Dieu!" Oh, my God! she said in French.

Marten glanced at her. She was staring wide-eyed at Bob.

Quickly Harris's eyes found hers. "So now you know. Don't say a word."

"I won't," she breathed. She stared a second longer in disbelief, then turned uncertainly to Marten. "What's happening here? I don't understand."

"Listen to me," the president leaned in trying to make himself heard over the din of Fermín Murguruza's music. "Any minute now the special agent in charge of my Secret Service detail will arrive. He and his men will have flown from Madrid. They have no idea what I'm doing or why, and frankly, at this point they don't care. Their job is to protect me at all costs. Above all they will not want known what's going on or that I am anywhere near here. Which is most likely the reason they haven't evacuated the building or locked it down. It would draw too much attention, and that's the last thing any of them wants.

"They work very quickly and very efficiently. If they had arrived when we were still in the room by now we would have been hustled out the back way, thrown into waiting cars, and gone. No one would ever know I or they had even been here, let alone that something had happened.

"At the same time, those tactics give us a tiny window of opportunity because when they arrive, when my agent in charge comes through the door with his deputy and starts up to the room, the focus of every other agent will be on the plan to evacuate me. It's then, the moment he goes up, we go out. The three of us, right out the side entrance, onto the street, and into the crowd. I looked at both entrances carefully before I came in. Once outside we turn right and walk as a threesome down the block. At the end of it, maybe two hundred feet away, is a line of taxi cabs. Take the first one available and let me do the talking."

Marten leaned in, "You're basing all this on the certainty your special agent will come in through the front and not some other way."

"You're right, I'm not certain, I'm guessing. But that's because I know him well. Not only is he horrified the president vanished on his watch, he's worried as hell about my well-being and will want to get me out of here and into his custody as fast as he can. To do that he will take the shortest route to the object, and that is through the front door and up the elevators directly to the room."

"What if he doesn't? What if he goes in another way, crashes the room, and finds you gone. No one's seen you go out. It means you're still somewhere in the building. Attention or not, this place will be shut down before any of us can take another breath."

The president half smiled. "Let's just hope I know my man well enough to be right." Immediately he looked to Demi. "You were thrust into this because of Mr. Marten and what you might know about Dr. Foxx."

Demi started.

"Am I correct?" President Harris pushed her.

Marten calmed her, "I told you before, he knows, it's alright to talk in front of him."

"Yes, you are correct," Demi said.

"Then you understand that if Mr. Marten or I are caught whatever information you have come to Mr. Marten with will go for nothing because I won't be able to do anything about it and neither will he. That puts you directly on the spot."

"I don't understand," she said.

"Because of the newspaper photo they will know what Mr. Marten looks like, and quite obviously my people know what I look like, and if they were surprised by my lack of hair they won't be now that they've talked to the desk clerk. That brings us back to you because none of them know you," the president paused, looking her in the eye. Marten knew he was using the moment to judge her.

"What I'm doing, Ms. Picard, is putting your well-being and Mr. Marten's and mine fully into your hands. I'm asking for your help. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Will you help?"

Demi glanced at Marten, then looked back to the president, "What do you want me to do?"

• 3:45 A.M.

Demi got up from the table and went out into the lobby carrying her large purse. Left behind was the big floppy hat she had been wearing and her light-colored trench coat.

• 3:46 A.M.

Demi used a napkin to fan herself as she mingled with sweaty, high-spirited dancers getting air just outside the open doors to the Jamboree Club. Her real attention was on the main entrance.

Ten feet away Marten and President Harris stood watching just inside the club's doors. Marten had mussed up his hair, opened his shirt and had Demi's trench coat thrown cavalierly over one shoulder to hide his travel bag beneath it. The president, still wearing his clear glasses, had taken her big floppy hat and pulled it foppishly down over one ear, effectively, and for the most part, covering his baldness.

• 3:50 A.M.

Demi saw the four come through the front door and head directly for the elevators, one of them with a raincoat over his arm. The president's descriptions of Hap Daniels and Bill Strait had been perfect, as had been his prediction of their actions. The two men with them she recognized from her time in Washington: presidential adviser Jake Lowe and U.S. National Security Adviser Dr. James Marshall. Abruptly she turned and walked back into the club.

"Now," she said.

• 3:51 A.M.

The threesome came out of the Jamboree Club walking arm in arm across the crowded lobby toward the side entrance. They were self-absorbed, laughing, half-dancing to the music as they moved through the crowd. They looked exactly as they wanted to look, a couple of half-drunken gay men and their party-loving straight girl out for the evening.

Five seconds and they were halfway to the door. Another three and they were almost to it.

"Not quite yet," the president said, forcing a smile and stopping. "One more drink before we go." As quickly he turned them back. "Just outside," he said, "Secret Service agent who's been on my detail since the inauguration."

• 3:52 A.M.

The elevator slowed and stopped, the door opened and Hap Daniels, Bill Strait, Jake Lowe and James Marshall stepped out into the fourth floor hallway.

There was no need for Daniels to identify any of them to either Alfonso Leon or Sanzo Tarrega. They had known who they were and what they would be doing the moment the Chinook touched down at police headquarters. That agent Strait carried a raincoat was no surprise either. It was to throw over the president's head just before they brought him out, making certain no accidental passerby or alert media person or any paparazzi lurking undetected would have the slightest chance for recognition, let alone a photograph.

• 3:53 A.M.

The three remaining Secret Service agents who had accompanied Daniels from Madrid made contact with the Spanish GEO operatives at the hotel's rear service/delivery entrance and then went inside to the service elevator.

At the same time, the rolling stock Daniels had requested little more than an hour earlier from Madrid-a lead car, an armored van with two doctors and two EMT techs inside, and three security tail cars-pulled up and stopped beside the GEO car. Immediately their lights were turned off.

• 3:54 A.M.

The president, Nicholas Marten, and Demi stood in the crowd just outside the open doors to the Jamboree Club. Across the lobby they could see the slim desk clerk and CIA asset Ortega. The clerk was on the phone and busy. Ortega had moved from the chair where she had been sitting and now stood near the main entrance, watching it carefully.

"We're running out of time," the president said quietly. "We'll have to use the main entrance and hope the woman posted there is the only one and that the others are on strict assignment elsewhere. If we get past her, turn right outside and move into the crowd. If for some reason they get me, just keep going. If you try to help, somebody might get killed."

The president was about to start toward the door. "Wait," Marten said quickly and turned to Demi. "You speak French."

"Of course."

"You go first. When you get to the woman speak to her as if you were a French tourist separated from your group and looking for directions to the harbor. She might understand, she might not; it doesn't matter. We'll be right behind you. All we need is about five seconds of distraction to get past her. Once we're out, just thank her and leave. We'll meet you halfway down the block. Can you do that?"

"Yes."

"Good."

• 3:55 A.M.

Jake Lowe and Dr. Marshall stood pressed against the wall as Hap Daniels and Bill Strait moved to the door of room 408. The corridor behind them was covered by CIA assets Tarrega and Leon in the event they needed help or that a hotel guest tried to leave his or her room.

The three Secret Service agents who had taken the service elevator up from the rear entrance waited twenty feet down the hallway in a small L-shaped nook that housed the service elevator, the way the president would be taken down once they had him. The central elevator Hap and the others had taken up was locked and "temporarily out of service."

Electronic room card in hand, Hap Daniels looked at Bill Strait, who held the raincoat to be thrown over the president's head, then glanced at Jake Lowe and Dr. Marshall.

"Five seconds," he said quietly into the tiny microphone at his collar. He put up one finger, then two.

The four CIA assets on the roof of the building across the street tensed. The two watching the street shifted their binoculars to the window of room 408. The two sharpshooters with Barrett.50 caliber sniper rifles and night-vision scopes were already squared on it. If someone or some group was holding the president hostage he, she or they, would be dead in the next few seconds.

• THE HOTEL LOBBY, SAME TIME

Marten and the president were steps behind Demi. Just beyond her they could see the female CIA asset standing just inside the hotel's main foyer. To their right they saw the desk clerk hang up the phone, then turn away and talk to someone.

• THE FOURTH FLOOR CORRIDOR

Hap Daniels threw up fingers four, then five.

In one move he slid the electronic key into the latch. A half second later the red light on the lock turned green and he shoved the door open.

• THE HOTEL FOYER

"Excusez-moi. Mes amis sont partis. Pouvez-vous me dire quelle manière c'est au port? Là où mon hôtel est." Excuse me. My friends have left. Can you tell me which way it is to the harbor? Where my hotel is.

Demi had stepped in front of Iuliana Ortega, blocking her view of the hotel entrance. As she did, Marten and the president slipped past and vanished into crowded sidewalk outside.

"Trouvez un taxi, il est une longue promenade." Find a taxi, it's a long walk, Ortega said brusquely, then immediately stepped around her, trying to keep an eye on the door.

"Merci," Demi said, then turned and walked out.

60

• 3:58 A.M

"God dammit!" Hap Daniels yelled out loud.

Special Agent Bill Strait was right behind him. Jake Lowe and Dr. James Marshall rushed in from the hallway.

Room 408 was empty.

"Was he here?" Lowe pushed into the room with Marshall on his heels.

Daniels ignored him, instead spoke into his headset. "Lock down the building now! Nobody in or out. I want every last damn person checked. Along with every closet, toilet, hallway, every last inch, and that includes the goddamn air-conditioning ducts this time."

Suddenly Jake Lowe was in his face. "I asked you if he was here. Was the president here in this room?"

Daniels glared at him for a heartbeat, then calmed, "Don't know, sir," he said professionally, then abruptly turned back to his headset. "Alert Spanish intel. Have their people already on post seal down a two-mile perimeter around the hotel. Ask them to authorize the detention of any Caucasian male inside it between forty and seventy who is either bald or partially bald. Also to authorize the apprehension and detention of Nicholas Marten. And keep the media as far away from this as possible."

Daniels looked to Marshall. "I think you'd better inform the chief of staff and the White House press secretary. They're both going to have a helluva lot of work and in a big hurry if this gets out."

"Was he here?" Jake Lowe asked again. This time quietly but very deliberately, his eyes stark with anger.

Hap Daniels looked at him, then tugged on an ear and glanced around the room. The bed was disheveled, as if someone had been sleeping in it. A chair was pulled back from a small writing desk.

Daniels turned and went down the hall and into the bathroom. A washcloth and several wet towels were on the sink. The bathtub was still wet, the shower head slowly dripping. For a moment Daniels did nothing, just stood there thinking. A second later he brushed past Marshall and Bill Strait, went back into the bedroom, and stared at the bed. He studied it for a moment and then went over and bent down and sniffed the sheets and then the rumpled pillow.

"What the hell are you doing?" Jake Lowe snapped. "Was he here or wasn't he? Or don't you know?"

Abruptly Daniels straightened up. "Aftershave."

"What?"

"Aftershave. On the pillow. The president has been using the same cheap stuff ever since I've known him."

"You mean he was here."

"Yes, sir, he was." Daniels looked at Bill Strait, "Get a tech team up here now, see what we can find out."

"Yes, sir." Strait turned and walked off down the hallway speaking into his own headset.

"Hap," Marshall leaned his six-foot, four-inch frame against the writing desk and crossed his arms in front of him. His manner was icy. "What do we do now?"

"Hope like hell we find him in the next twenty minutes. We don't, we can begin the whole process all over again."

61

• 4:03 A.M.

"La estación del tren Barcelona-Sants." Barcelona-Sants Train Station, the president said as he, Demi, and Marten climbed into the back seat of crisp yellow-and-black taxi number 6622.

"Sí." The driver put the taxi in gear and sped off just as the sound of sirens filled the air. The driver crossed a square, turned left and then slowed quickly to avoid hitting two Barcelona police cars crossing directly in front of him.

"The alarm is out," Marten said quietly. "They'll be watching the station."

"I know," the president said.

"Then-?"

"We'll see," the president sat back and pulled Demi's big floppy hat a little farther down over his forehead.

Demi looked at him, then turned to Marten. "Wherever you're going, I can't join you. It's what I had to talk to you about, why I came."

Suddenly two more police cars screamed past going in the direction of Marten's hotel. Just then they saw the line of stopped traffic.

"Mossos d'Esquadra. ¿Qué demonios pasa aqui?" Catalan state police. What the hell is going on? The cab driver looked at them in the mirror.

"¿Algo, pero, quién sabe qué?" Something, who knows? The president shrugged, then quickly looked to Marten.

"Road block," he said sotto voce. "They'll be doing a vehicle search. There'll be more and then more after that. They build these things in concentric circles. Roadblocks funneled into checkpoints and then more outside them."

"Then we'll walk," Marten said

"Yes." Immediately the president looked to the driver. "Pare, por favor." Please pull over.

"¿Aquí?" Here?

"Sí."

The driver shrugged and abruptly pulled to the curb. The three got out and the president paid the driver, giving him a large tip. "Usted nunca nos vio," he said, the big hat hiding his features. You never saw us.

"Nunca," the driver winked. Never.

Marten slammed the door and the cab drove off.

Uneasy pedestrians moved around them, increasingly concerned about what was going on.

"Terroristas." Terrorists. Some said out loud, "Terroristas," others whispered. "¿Vascos, ETA?" someone asked. "No," several voices spat fearfully at once, "al Qaeda."

Drivers backed up for the roadblock were eerily quiet. Tension and dread anticipation filled the air. At another point in history they would have been impatiently yelling and honking their horns. Not now.

"Keep moving," the president said quickly, "stay in the crowd."

Marten nodded and took Demi by the arm, positioning her between himself and the president as they went. There was no doubt now the Secret Service knew the president had been in Marten's hotel room and that every stop had been pulled out to find them. All they could do was try and blend in to what was a long line of frightened people, people, they prayed, who would not recognize the man in the floppy hat shuffling along among them and then raise the alarm out of sheer surprise if nothing else.

Marten let three young men shove past them, then looked at Demi, "Before, in the taxi, you said you couldn't go with us. Why?"

Demi hesitated, then glanced at the president and looked back to Marten. "Reverend Beck is meeting Dr. Foxx tomorrow. In the early afternoon at the Benedictine Monastery at Montserrat in the mountains northeast of here. He asked me to go with him and I agreed. I have to go back to the hotel. We're leaving from there."

Marten and the president exchanged glances, then Marten turned back to Demi.

"He asked you to go, just like that?"

"Yes. For the same reason I came to Barcelona, to continue the photo shoot for the book."

"Did he say why he canceled your Balkan trip or why he left Malta the way he did?"

"All he said was that something came up unexpectedly and he had to meet someone here in the city. He didn't say anything more. Just apologized for leaving so abruptly."

Suddenly there was a convergence of sirens ahead. People surged past them as if something was happening. More followed in their wake. They moved with them, trying to stay hidden in the crowd. Demi glanced at the president, then looked back to Marten.

"I did what you recommended and told Beck you followed me to Barcelona, and that we met and talked. I expected him to show some anger or surprise. He didn't. Instead, he said something in passing to the effect that he wished you and Dr. Foxx had left things on a more congenial note in Malta. He didn't say why or even ask why you had followed me here or what we had talked about. It seemed to be of little interest to him, as if he had other things on his mind, but it gave me the sense that if you showed up in Montserrat while we were there he might find a way for you and Foxx to meet and talk things through. You could even say it was my idea, that way it wouldn't spoil my situation with him, especially when I ask his help in finding my sister."

Marten studied her. Even now, after what they'd just been through, it was hard to know if he could trust her; if she was lying, if the whole melodrama of Foxx and Beck so abruptly leaving Malta and then having her come to Barcelona afterward was all part of whatever they were involved with. And this seemingly offhand "peace offering" to Marten, this wish by Beck that he and Merriman Foxx had left things on a "more congenial note" seemed a very convenient way to get him to come to Montserrat on his own-to an isolated monastery where they could get him alone, then demand to know whom he worked for and was reporting to and afterward get rid of him altogether. If that were the case and Demi's late night call to rendezvous with him was their idea and not hers, he needed to learn as much as he could about what was going on before she went back to her hotel.

"Is the woman in black going with you to Montserrat?"

"Who?" Demi seemed wholly surprised.

"Earlier tonight you and Beck left the hotel and went to the cathedral. A woman in black was with you, an older woman."

"How did you know?"

"How I know isn't important. I'm interested in who she is and what she has to do with Beck."

"Her name is Luciana," Demi answered matter-of-factly and without hesitation. "She's an Italian friend of the reverend. She was with him at the hotel when I arrived."

"Is she the one he had to leave Malta to come here to meet?"

"I don't know, but it was she who arranged the trip to the monastery through a priest at the cathedral." Demi glanced at the people around her, then looked back to Marten and lowered her voice. "She belongs to the coven. She has the tattoo on her thumb. And yes, she's going with us."

Marten looked at the president. He could see he was puzzled. He knew there was information being passed but he had no idea what it was. Marten was about to say something, to try and explain but was cut off by the scream of a siren as another police car shot past them, its loudspeaker blaring, ordering drivers to pull to the side. Following in its wake were two large dark blue trucks marked Mossos d'Esquadra. A hundred yards ahead the vehicles stopped dead, the trucks' rear doors flew open, and at least two dozen heavily armed police jumped out.

"Dammit," the president blurted under his breath.

All around them people stared wide-eyed. "Terroristas." "Al Qaeda." The words came more quickly this time, more numerous and more fearful.

The president looked to Marten. "They're widening their net and turning up the heat. From here on out they'll have every street, every alley, shut down tight."

"Then we turn and go back," Marten said calmly.

"To where?"

"We're considerate fellows. The young lady was trying to get to her hotel and we thoughtfully escorted her."

Demi started. "You're going to my hotel?"

"At least you have a room, and I don't think they're going to let us in anywhere else. We'll have to fake our way past the people at the front desk."

"How are we going to get there?" Demi nodded toward the mass of snarled traffic. "If we take a cab we'll be stopped at the next roadblock. It's one thing if I'm alone. With you two we'll all be caught, and that will be that."

"She's right," the president said.

Marten hesitated, then looked back over his shoulder the way they had come. "We walk."

"What?" Demi blurted.

Marten looked back. "The same as here. We walk."

62

• RIVOLI JARDÍN HOTEL, SAME TIME, 4:20 A.M.

Intense, heavily controlled chaos. Very nearly an exact repeat of what had taken place less than twenty-four hours earlier at the Hotel Ritz in Madrid.

Uniformed Barcelona police under the supervision of GEO agents and CIA assets Ortega, Leon, and Tarrega checked the identification of every person in the hotel. Guests were awoken from sleep, their rooms searched, identifications checked. Hotel employees and patrons and musicians from the Jamboree Club were treated with the same polite ferocity. The police were following up on a tip that "known terrorists had checked into the hotel under false names"-two, it was rumored, had already been found and arrested. Even the affable Basque singer Fermín Murguruza was questioned and then released, all the while signing autographs for surrounding fans also being questioned. "Under the circumstances," Murguruza said proudly, "who would not try to help the authorities?"

Additionally, Hap Daniels's strict directive to check "every closet, toilet, hallway, every last inch, and that includes the goddamn air-conditioning ducts this time" was followed to the letter and then the entire procedure was repeated.

In room 408 a tech crew provided by Spanish intelligence and under the command of Special Agent Bill Strait inched over everything. One floor below, a meeting room had been turned into a Secret Service command post. A secure phone had been installed with a direct line to the U.S. embassy in Madrid and another to Washington and the working war room set up in the basement of the White House. Most obvious and pressing was the ongoing situation with the president, but increasingly worrisome was what to do about the upcoming NATO meeting Monday in Warsaw, where President Harris was to announce a new spirit of "political accord" and "solidarity against terrorism" despite the still-festering "difficulties" with Germany and France.

"Who's there with you?" Jake Lowe paced up and down, secure phone to his ear, on the line to Secretary of State David Chaplin at the White House while National Security Adviser James Marshall listened on the phone's extension just feet away. A weary, infuriated Hap Daniels stood partway across the room, one eye on Lowe and Marshall, the other on the small cadre of quickly-brought-in CIA techs working laptops and monitoring the Barcelona hunt for the president.

"Terry Langdon and Chet Keaton. The vice president is on his way," Chaplin said.

"The president's ill, we're more certain than ever of that now. Moreover, he seems to have this American-Brit, Nicholas Marten, helping him. How and why and to what end we don't know." Lowe's clear-cut explanation was wholly for Hap Daniels's benefit.

"Obviously he's very determined, and now he's got help," Chaplin said in the part of the conversation Daniels couldn't hear. "As long as he remains on the loose he's dangerous as hell because he will find a way to expose us. That said, Terry's insistent about Monday. Everything's in place and he feels we can't let this situation hold us back. If worse comes to worst we'll announce he's got the stomach flu or something and the vice president will take his place in Warsaw. Meanwhile the media is starting to push for more information on what happened in Madrid and where the POTUS is now. The honeymoon hours are almost over; we're going to have to give them something."

"Get the chief of staff and the press secretary on the line and we'll decide what to do now," Lowe snapped.

"David, can you hear me?" Marshall stepped in.

"Yes, Jim."

"Regarding Warsaw. Jake and I agree. We are going under the assumption all this will be put to bed and the president will be there as planned."

"Right."

"Terry, you there?"

"Yes, Jim," Secretary of Defense Langdon's voice came through strongly.

"I just explained to David, we all agree about Warsaw," Marshall glanced casually around the room, making certain Daniels or someone else wasn't being overcurious about his conversation. "We're going ahead as planned."

"Good."

"At this point no changes at all," Marshall turned to look at Jake Lowe.

"Right."

"More when we have something," Lowe said, and hung up. Marshall did the same. When he turned he saw Hap Daniels was watching him.

63

• 4:42 A.M.

The three were pushed back into the darkened doorway waiting for the police car to pass. When it did they lingered another twenty seconds to make sure a second car wasn't following behind it. Finally they stepped out and moved on. By now Marten, Demi, and President Harris had worked their way back to Ciutat Vella, the old city, with its ancient buildings and narrow streets. Streets that, except for the lone passerby or the startling wail of a stray cat underfoot or the bark of a dog at the end of an alley as they passed, were finally quiet. That they had come this far unmolested was due to luck and because they had stayed in the shadows and followed their instincts. A turn here, another there. A stepping back in the dark and waiting for a person or vehicle to pass. The president, floppy hat pulled low, had stopped once to speak Spanish to an old man sitting alone on a curbstone, asking the way to Rambla de Catalunya, where Demi's hotel was. The old man had not even looked up, just simply pointed off and mumbled.

"Sigue por ahí tres minutos y luego gire a la derecha." That way three minutes and then turn right.

"Gracias," the president said and they moved on.

Their constant fear was the stranger passing who, by some quirk of circumstance, might recognize the president and sound the alarm, or the police car still on patrol unexpectedly turning a corner, to have its officers suddenly stop and question them. Or that Spanish intelligence, the Secret Service or CIA assets were stationed on rooftops watching them through night-vision goggles and at any minute a helicopter would roar in from nowhere to hold them in the searing beam of its searchlight until unmarked cars arrived and special agents jumped out to take them away.

It was five, maybe ten minutes more before they would reach the relative safety of Demi's hotel. The plan was for Demi to go to her room and for them to follow shortly afterward. There in its quiet and relative safety they would have the chance to address the near-impossible task before them: find a way to get the president and Marten past the hundreds of police checkpoints and the thirty-odd miles to the monastery at Montserrat at or about the same time Demi arrived with Reverend Beck and the woman called Luciana for their rendezvous with Merriman Foxx.

It was a problem that brought Marten back to the question of Demi herself. She was a respected journalist and photographer using her profession, as she had said, to uncover the truth of her sister's disappearance from Malta two years earlier and trusting that Merriman Foxx might provide some answer to it. Whether the story of her sister was true or not, everything seemed to center on the Aldebaran coven of witches and with it, the Machiavellian tale of ritual murder. That Foxx, Luciana, Cristina, the young woman who had been a guest at the dinner table in Malta, the late Dr. Lorraine Stephenson in Washington, and possibly Beck all wore the identifying tattoo of the coven intrigued him immensely. That Demi did not-Marten had scrutinized both her thumbs carefully, without her knowing, on more than one occasion-was equally interesting because she seemed to have gained access to them without trouble, most probably by convincing Beck to be one of the subjects of her book. That in itself raised another question-why Beck had let her; even to the point of inviting her to Barcelona after he'd so abruptly left Malta and providing a means for her transportation as well. Two things came immediately to mind. Either the coven was wholly innocuous and, secretive as it might seem, had nothing to hide; or it wasn't, and Beck was leading her on for reasons of his own. If the second were true she could very well be walking into something exceedingly dangerous, maybe even deadly.

Whichever it was, whether she was using Beck or he was guiding her into something else, one thing remained unwavering: her determination to get Marten to the monastery at Montserrat and into the hands of Merriman Foxx.

The trouble was that in setting Marten up she had also set up the president. It was a bad situation, and both men knew it. They also knew they had no choice but to proceed. To them Foxx was the key to everything. What he knew they had to find out: the specifics of the plan against the Muslim states, when and where it was to begin, the names of those involved, and for Marten in particular, what he had done to Caroline Parsons. Moreover, the president not only wanted to know the details, he insisted they have them written down-a notepad, scratch paper, anything would do-dated and signed by Foxx. It was a document that, once in hand, would allow him to come out of the shadows without fear. By the time the Secret Service, a CIA team, or Spanish intelligence reached him he would have placed calls (and hopefully faxed copies) to the secretaries-general of NATO and the United Nations and to the editors-in-chief of The Washington Post and The New York Times. Nothing would be kept back, none of it politically couched, including the planned assassinations in Warsaw. It would be news that would explode across the world in seconds, and its ramifications would be enormous-economically, politically, and because of the horror of what it had promised, emotionally. But it had to be done, it was far too grave and far-reaching for anything but the truth.

So, trap or not, and hugely dangerous and immensely difficult as it might be, the attempt to reach the monastery at Montserrat had to be made.

That left only the next problem.

How to get there.

And what to do, when, and if, they did.

64

• CHANTILLY, FRANCE, 6:44 A.M.

Victor stood in a thick jungle of trees three hundred feet back from the target area. The barrel of his M14 rifle rested in the V of a wooden makeshift monopod and was pointed through the gray mist of early morning toward the thoroughbred practice track called "Coeur de la Forêt. " Even in the chill he was comfortable. He was a professional killer and this was what he did. And what they asked him to do. And what they fully expected he would do. Not could do, as if he were a low-level employee, but what he would fully execute as a marksman, as a professional.

"Victor." Richard's calm and soothing voice came over his headset.

"Yes, Richard."

"How are you feeling?"

"Fine."

"Not cold or damp."

"No, Richard. Just fine."

"The horses and jockeys are just leaving the training facility. In approximately thirty-five seconds they will be at the start of the practice track. Once there they will get their final instructions from the trainer. Ten to fifteen seconds after that the practice race will begin. It should take them about seventy seconds to reach where you are. Are you alright with that, Victor?"

"Yes, Richard."

"Afterward you know what to do."

"Yes, Richard."

"Thank you, Victor."

"No, Richard, thank you."

• BARCELONA, 6:50 A.M.

Barefoot, pant legs rolled up, coffee cups in hand, and looking like early-rising tourists on holiday, Nicholas Marten and President of the United States John Henry Harris walked across the wet sand of low tide watching the first light of day break over the Mediterranean. Above and behind them was an outcropping of rocky cliffs that shielded the desolate stretch of beach where they were from the dirt road they had come in on. An X on a map would suggest they were about fifteen miles north of Barcelona somewhere between Costa Daurada to the south and Costa Brava to the north.

Isolated and away from the city proper, it gave them a brief respite, one carefully calculated to give the security forces time to fully execute their roadblocks and checkpoints, and then, coming up empty, to hopefully stand down or at least to ease their presence and let the city come back to some semblance of normal while they regrouped, re-worked their tactics and brought in more manpower. And it was just that window Marten and the president would use to make their move toward Montserrat. Both knew that once that second wave began, the scope and size of it would be unprecedented. John Henry Harris was not simply a missing person, he was a missing president of the United States, and the determination of the Secret Service, CIA, FBI, NSA, Spanish intelligence and Spanish police forces to find him and bring him to what they assumed was safety would make his, and therefore Marten's, chance of escaping zero at best.

Marten glanced back. In the dim morning light he could see the protective cliffs above them and the small turnaround at the end of the road where the black Mercedes limousine that had brought them there was parked. Standing beside it watching them was its dark-suited middle-aged driver, the affable Miguel Balius, a Barcelonan raised in Australia who had later returned to his native city. It was Balius's keen knowledge of Barcelona's streets and alleys that had helped them avoid the maze of police checkpoints and roadblocks and get them to the remote beach where they were now. That they had come this far was due to Balius's seemingly wholly naïve creativity, Marten's original idea, and Demi's smooth execution of it.

They had reached the Hotel Regente Majestic at 4:50 A.M. and gone immediately inside, Demi to the front desk and Marten and President Harris into the men's restroom just off the lobby, where they had cleaned up and waited. What Marten had suggested in the last moments before they reached the hotel was, if it worked, outrageous, but no more outrageous than the situation they were in-essentially trapped inside the city of Barcelona while Spanish security forces demanded identification from nearly everyone trying to leave it.

Marten's idea had come from the simple reality of their situation-they had to remain free of the massive net surrounding them and at the same time get to the mountain monastery at Montserrat, arriving sometime around noon. To that end he created a scenario that with luck and if played properly just might work. Demi began it the moment they entered the hotel when she went directly to the front desk asking to see the concierge. The following is what she told Marten and the president she had said:

"My two cousins came in on an early-morning flight from New York for a family reunion. I went to meet them at the airport. It took a half hour to find them because the airline lost their luggage and they were off trying to locate it. They never did. It's still lost. On the way here we were caught up in whatever dreadful thing is going on in the city. It took an hour to get through one checkpoint. We had to show identification, everything."

"The authorities thought they had some terrorists trapped in a hotel not far from here," the concierge informed her. "They escaped. Or that's what we've been told, but they are still looking for them and that is the reason for all the chaos. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience."

"It's not your fault, of course, and we all must do our part to stop these people. My problem, however, is not terrorists but my cousins. I don't like them to begin with. On top of that they are irritable and over-tired, neither can sleep, and one is crazier than the other. They want to spend the day sightseeing. I have other things to do. I'm also exhausted and want to sleep. I was thinking of a limousine, just have someone take them wherever they want to go, to see whatever they want to see and bring them back later this evening. Is that possible?"

"You want to do it now, at this time of day?"

"Yes, as soon as possible, and have whoever comes bring them something to eat, some bottled water and coffee. I don't want them waking me up to go to breakfast."

"I'm afraid it will be expensive."

"At this point, I don't care. Whatever it costs, charge it to my room."

"Very well, señorita, I will take care of it."

"One more thing. If the driver can find some way to avoid all of these tedious roadblocks and things… You understand, they'll just get more upset and want to come back early and then they'll take it out on me as if all this terrorist business was my fault."

"I will speak to the driver personally, señorita."

"Thank you, señor, thank you very much. I can't tell you how much this means to me."

At that point Demi started to turn away, then had one more thought.

" I'm sorry. I don't mean to keep imposing on you but other family members will be gathering in the hotel and the cousins' coming for the reunion is a big surprise. I would hope your staff and the driver will be discreet. I wouldn't want someone accidentally talking about it and spoiling everything."

"As before, señorita," the concierge half-bowed, "I will take care of it."

"Thank you again, señor. Muchas gracias."

Ten minutes later Miguel Balius and his Mercedes limousine arrived. Breakfast, bottled water, and coffee were provided by the hotel's room service. Demi kissed Cousins Jack (the president) and Harold (Marten) goodbye-with a whispered demand from Marten as he kissed her cheek-"Not a word to Beck or anyone else about 'Cousin Jack.'"

"Of course not, silly." She'd smiled, then reminded Cousin Jack to wear his big hat and be careful not to get too much sun, and off they all went. She to bed. They to try and escape the enormous manhunt for them.

65

• 7:00 A.M.

It was still nearly fifty minutes to sunrise. Again Marten glanced back at the rocky cliffs, looking for any sign of forces moving in to entrap them, but he saw nothing. Immediately he looked to the sky, half expecting the sudden swoop of a helicopter or to hear the drone of a search plane. All he saw was the deserted beach; the only sound, the lap of the waves at their feet. A second more, and his attention went to President Harris.

"We need to get moving and soon," he said with urgency.

"Yes, I know," the president said, and they turned back across the sand toward Miguel Balius and the limousine in the distance. "I've been thinking about Merriman Foxx, Mr. Marten. What to do, if and when we get to Montserrat. How to get him alone without being caught ourselves and after that how to get him to tell us what we have to know.

"Yet as important as all that is, it is only part of what is going on. To my horror I suddenly realized that I am the only person on this side of the fence who knows anything about the rest of their plan and if something happens to me those sons-of-bitches will be free to go ahead with it. And there's no question they will.

"I told you earlier, time is crucial but I didn't say why. Today is Saturday. On Monday I am scheduled to join the leaders of the NATO countries at a major conference in Warsaw."

"I know, sir, I read about it."

"What you don't know, what no one knows is what my so-called 'friends' have planned for that day. It's another part of the reason I crawled out through the air-conditioning ducts in Madrid. Why I came to you and why I'm here now. It's not just Foxx and whatever damned thing they have him preparing because whatever that is it will happen sometime after the NATO meeting," the president hesitated, his eyes probing Marten, as if he were still having trouble trusting anyone, Marten included.

"Please go on, Mr. President."

"Mr. Marten," the president made his decision. "The people conspiring against me are planning to assassinate the president of France and chancellor of Germany sometime during those NATO meetings. They want the current leaders removed so they can replace them with people in those countries sympathetic to their own ambitions. Exactly where and when or how the killings are to take place I don't know, but it will happen during the Warsaw meetings because they want it done on a world stage.

"They asked me-no, they demanded-that I issue a top-secret executive order authorizing those murders. I refused. In doing so I knew I had to escape or they would kill me. By law the vice president would then have become president and as a leading member of this conspiracy he would have no trouble whatsoever in giving it. The terrible irony is that in my absence the vice president will be in command anyway. The order will be given, Mr. Marten. Top secret, executed in the name of national security and authorized by the acting commander in chief."

"Jesus God," Marten breathed.

Anguish crossed the president's face. "I have no way to communicate that threat to anyone capable of taking action without being found out and having that line of communication immediately shut down. And with the people trying to find me knowing almost instantly exactly where I am.

"There is an annual meeting of the New World Institute, a global think tank of highly respected, high-profile business, academic, and former political leaders taking place this weekend at a resort called Aragon in the mountains just northwest of here. The meeting is closed to all but members and guests and, like the World Economic Forum, usually draws a large number of protest groups and with them an equally large gathering of media. As a result the security is heavy, supervised, I believe, by the Spanish Secret Service.

"I was to have been the surprise guest speaker at the sunrise service there tomorrow morning. A close friend, Rabbi David Aznar, lives in Gerona, an hour from here by train. He is presiding over the prayer service and was going to introduce me. I came to Barcelona hoping to use it as a jumping-off point to Gerona. Once there I'd planned to find my way to his home, tell him what was going on and hope that he could get me to Aragon and somehow past the security forces unseen so that I could still address the convention."

"And tell them what's happened."

"Yes. Politically and strategically dangerous maybe, but considering who they are, that they are meeting in seclusion and at a place relatively close by, and that there will be no media present-taken with the unbearable shortness of time before Warsaw and the fact that millions of lives are at stake-it would have been foolish of me not to attempt it. But then I realized the force looking for me was too great and that Rabbi David himself would undoubtedly be under physical surveillance with all of his electronic communications closely monitored. So the thought of reaching Aragon under his protection and addressing the assembly was no longer viable. At that point I knew I had to get off the streets before I was caught and taken somewhere and killed. That was when I saw the newspaper photograph and found you."

They were nearing the limousine now. Miguel Balius had opened the rear door and had towels over his arm for them to wipe the sand from their feet when they arrived.

Marten nodded toward Balius, "There's a good chance he will have had the radio or TV on, most likely listening to the news of what's been happening in the city. It's possible they may even have broadcast our descriptions, although that's doubtful because they don't want it to get out about you. Still, who knows what they've said or suggested? If he gets any sense that we're anything other than what he thinks we are he may want to do something about it."

"You mean alert the police."

"Yes."

They were almost to Balius, and he came toward them. "How was the walk gentlemen?" he said in his Aussie-accented English, reaching to take their coffee cups. Behind him, through the open door to the rear passenger compartment, Marten could see the glow of the limousine's small-screen television. He'd been right-Balius had been watching it.

"Nice beach," Marten said offhandedly. "Anything new about what's going on in the city?"

"Only what we heard before, sir. The authorities are looking for terrorists they thought they had trapped in a hotel but who escaped. That's all they're saying. Very close-lipped about the whole thing."

"I guess they have to be these days," Marten glanced at the president. Just then his cell phone rang. He started to reach for it, then saw the president shake his head in a clear warning not to answer it.

The phone rang again.

"What if it's Demi?" Marten said carefully. "What if the family plans have changed and we are to meet somewhere else?"

The president took a breath. He didn't like it, but Marten was right; anything could have happened, and the last thing they could afford was to lose their lone connection to Merriman Foxx.

"Make it brief. Very."

Marten opened his phone and clicked on, "Demi," he said quickly as Balius handed the president a towel and he sat down on the limousine's rear seat to clean the sand from his feet.

"What the hell's going on in Barcelona?" It was Peter Fadden, keyed up and gruff as usual.

"The police are looking for terrorists." Marten said clearly so that the president and especially Miguel Balius could hear him. "Supposedly they had them trapped in a hotel but it didn't work out. They're checking everyone. The whole city feels like a war zone. You still in Madrid?"

"Yes. And whatever started here seems to have shifted there."

"What do you mean?"

"I've interviewed maybe twenty employees at the Ritz and none of them saw or knows anyone who saw the Secret Service make a move to take the president out of the hotel. Then yesterday morning the Secret Service was all over the place interviewing everyone about what they saw the night before. It was like something has happened to the president but nobody's talking. Then the entire press contingent that was supposed to follow him to Warsaw was flown back to Washington riding on the official story that he was taken to an undisclosed location in the middle of the night because of a reliable terrorist threat. Now the whole of Spanish intelligence seems zeroed in on Barcelona. Something big is going on. Is it really terrorists, or does somebody have the president and they're trying to keep it quiet?"

Marten glanced at the president. "You're asking the wrong guy."

"No, I'm asking a guy who's there and who might have some sense of it. I'm not thinking terrorists, Nick, I'm thinking Mike Parsons's committee. I'm thinking Merriman Foxx."

Suddenly President Harris was dragging his hand across his throat. Once, twice, three times. He meant for Marten to cut his conversation right away and get off the phone.

"Peter, let me get back to you," Marten said quickly, "soon as I can."

Marten clicked off and watched the president slide out of sight into the dark of the limousine's interior.

"Towel, sir," Miguel Balius held a fresh towel out to Marten.

"Cousin Harold can clean his feet in the car, Miguel. I would like to leave the area right away," the president said firmly.

"Now, sir?"

"Now."

"Yes, sir."

66

• 7:17 A.M.

Miguel Balius's foot touched the accelerator. For an instant the Mercedes' rear tires spun in the roadside gravel, then they caught and the limousine roared off, bouncing over what was little more than a dirt lane.

"Miguel?" President Harris said out loud, looking through the privacy glass that separated the driver's compartment from the passengers'. It was a test to see if he could hear their conversation without the passenger pushing the intercom button. Marten had done the same thing when they had driven from the Hotel Regente Majestic through the city's back roads to the beach. But he wanted to test it again to make sure.

"Miguel?" he said once more, but Balius didn't respond. Immediately he looked to Marten. "Your phone," he said.

"I understand," Marten said. "The Secret Service knows who I am and will have the number. They'll have a global satellite trace on it."

"Not just a trace. The NSA will have intercepted it and given the Secret Service the geographic coordinates in seconds. I know my men-they'll be scrambling like hell to get here as fast as they can. I appreciate why you took the call, and I let you. I shouldn't have. Just hope we got out of there in time."

"Mr. President," Marten leaned in, "that call was not from Demi."

"I gathered."

"It wasn't trivial. It came from a Washington Post investigative reporter. He knows about Caroline Parsons and her suspicion that she and her husband and son were murdered. He knows about Merriman Foxx and Dr. Stephenson. He's even found the clinic outside Washington where Caroline was treated by Foxx. The Silver Spring Rehabilitation Center in Silver Spring, Maryland.

"He's in Madrid, Mr. President. He's questioned the staff at your hotel there. He doesn't believe the official White House story that you were taken away in the middle of the night. He thinks you are the reason for the Spanish intelligence presence in Barcelona. That you may have been kidnapped and that Merriman Foxx had something to do with it."

"Who is this reporter?"

"His name is Peter Fadden."

"I know him. Not well, but I know him. He's a good man."

"I told him I'd call him back."

"You can't."

"If I don't he'll call me."

"We can't chance that, Mr. Marten. Turn the phone off and leave it off. We'll have to let Mr. Fadden assume what he wants. We'll also have to trust that there has been no change in Ms. Picard's plans."

Now they were at the end of the beach road, and Balius swung the Mercedes left onto a narrow tarmac highway that led away from the shoreline and toward the distant hills. As the limousine straightened out, President Harris glanced at the small screen mounted in the rear of the front seat. The channel was tuned to CNN. A story about deadly rains in India played on the screen. The president watched a second longer, then touched the intercom button. "Miguel."

"Yes, sir."

"Friends were telling us about a place in the mountains near here, a monastery I believe," the president said easily, conversationally. "They said it was a place every tourist should visit."

Balius looked in the mirror and smiled proudly. "You mean Montserrat."

The president looked at Marten. "Was that the name, Cousin?"

"Yes, Montserrat."

"We would like to go there, Miguel."

"Yes, sir."

"Can we get there by noon? That would give us time to look around before we are due back in the city."

"I think we can, sir. Unless we run into more roadblocks."

"Why can't the police catch these people? There are hundreds of them, how hard can it be?" the president added an edge of crankiness and irritation to what before had been an easy, congenial manner. "People have other things to do besides wait in line at some checkpoint only to be passed through and ten minutes later stopped at another one."

"I agree, sir."

"We don't want to be late getting back to the city. You got around them before, Miguel. We're confident you can do it again."

"I appreciate that, sir. I'll do my best."

"We know you will, Miguel. We know you will."

67

• BARCELONA, 7:34 A.M.

"Sobrevolar. Zona de coordenadas abandonada. Repito, sobrevolar. Zona de coordenadas abandonada." Fly over. Coordinate area deserted. Repeat. Fly over. Coordinate area deserted.

Hap Daniels perked up at the sharp declaration of the lead Grupo Especial de Operaciones jet helicopter pilot. A heartbeat later came the voice of the pilot of a second GEO helicopter pilot.

"Confirmado. Zona de coordenadas abandonada." Confirm. Coordinate area deserted.

Hap Daniels was staring at a computer screen in front of him looking at an NSA satellite photograph of the Barcelona coast. He could see the city, the airport, the run of the Llobregat River from the mountains to the sea, the port of Barcelona, and to the north the Besós River and the coast beyond it reaching toward the Costa Brava. Daniels touched the keyboard in front of him and the picture enhanced once, then twice, then three times until the image zeroed in on 41° 24'04'' N and 2° 6'22'' E, the geographical coordinates the NSA had picked up from Nicholas Marten's cell phone signal. It was the coastline in an area north of the city and what looked like a stretch of deserted beach.

"Colonel, this is Tigre Uno," Daniels spoke calmly into his headset, talking to the commander in charge of the GEO air units and using the code name-Tigre Uno or Tiger One-given him by Spanish intelligence. "Please ask your lead pilot to pull up to fifteen hundred feet and survey the entire area. Please ask your second pilot to set down for an on-ground inspection."

"Roger, Tigre Uno."

"Thank you, Colonel."

Daniels took a breath and sat back. He was exhausted, exasperated, and still mad as hell, mostly at himself for letting all this happen. The reason didn't matter. The president should never have been able to slip away undetected. It was unforgivable.

Surrounded by computer screens, he rode in the command chair of the Secret Service's huge black SUV electronic communications unit that had been flown in from Madrid. In front of him, riding shotgun next to the driver, was his chief deputy, Bill Strait. Behind him, four Secret Service intelligence specialists manned computer screens monitoring surveillance traffic from a half dozen different security agencies and at the same time hoping, as they all were, that Marten would again use his cell phone.

Daniels glanced at the screen in front of him again and then looked around the vehicle's narrow confines to where Jake Lowe and Dr. James Marshall were buckled into fold-down jumpseats, staring in silence at nothing. They looked like deeply troubled warriors: fierce, strong, angry and uncertain.

Outside, the Barcelona cityscape flashed by. The only sound the scream of sirens of two Guàrdia Urbana police cars clearing the way in front of them. Directly behind followed the unmarked armored van with two Secret Service agents, two doctors, and two emergency medical technicians. Bringing up the rear were three unmarked Secret Service tail cars with four special agents in each.

Twelve miles away at a private airstrip just north of the city a private CIA jet ordered by the White House chief of staff, Tom Curran, still working from the temporary "war room" at the U.S. embassy in Madrid, waited to fly the president to a still-undecided location Daniels thought would be in either central Switzerland or southern Germany.

"Vector 4-7-7," a young, curly-haired intelligence specialist said suddenly.

"What?" Hap Daniels responded.

"4-7-7. We've got another call."

Immediately Daniels switched frequencies. At the same time electronic triangulation began on the signal. Instantly a new set of geographical coordinates popped up, superimposed over a map of northeast Barcelona on the screen in front of him.

"You're sure it's Marten's cell?"

"Yes, sir."

Jake Lowe and Dr. Marshall reacted intensely, each directly tuning his own headset to the audio feed.

Again Daniels enhanced the picture on his screen, this time zeroing in on the green foothills north and just east of the Besós River. A half-second later he put a hand to the earpiece of his headset as if he was trying to hear more clearly. "What the hell are they saying?"

"Not they. Just one voice, sir. It's the incoming call."

"Incoming from where?"

"Manchester, England."

"Where in Manchester?" Dr. Marshall snapped.

"Quiet!" Daniels was looking at no one, just trying to understand what was being said.

What they heard was a lone male voice speaking softly but deliberately:

"Alabamense. Albiflorum. Arborescens. Atlanticum. Austrinum. Calendulaceum. Camtschaticum. Canadense. Canescens."

"What the hell is he talking about?" Jake Lowe's voice stabbed through a half dozen earpieces.

"Cumberlandense. Flammeum."

By now everyone was looking at each other. Lowe was right. What the hell was he saying?

"Mucronulatum. Nudiflorum. Roseum."

"Azaleas!" Bill Strait barked suddenly. "Somebody's reading off the names of azaleas."

"Schlippenbachii!"

Suddenly there was silence as Marten's cell phone went dead.

"Did we pick up the coordinates?" Hap Daniels demanded from the techs behind him. Just then a crosshair of coordinates came up on his screen superimposed over an enhanced satellite picture of the piedmont and marked off in a five-square-mile grid.

"He's in the area inside the grid, sir," the disembodied voice of an NSA navigator came back from three thousand miles away.

"We have better than that, sir." The curly-haired intel specialist behind Daniels smiled, then touched his mouse. Abruptly all the screens shifted to a different view of the same image. Immediately he enhanced it five, and then tenfold, and they saw what looked like an apple orchard with a dirt road cutting through it. He enhanced it once more, and they saw a wisp of a vehicle's dust trail lift from the road itself.

"Got 'em!" he said.

68

• CHANTILLY-GOUVIEUX SNCF RAILROAD STATION

CHANTILLY, FRANCE, 7:44 A.M.

Golf bag over one shoulder, suitcase in hand, Victor boarded first-class car number 22388 of the Chantilly to Paris train and found a window seat near the front.

Ten minutes earlier he had checked out of his hotel and taken a taxi to the station. By then most of the frantic activity had died down. The police cars, the emergency response team, and the ambulances had long disappeared around a bend in the road, going, he was told, to a place he knew well-the Coeur de la Forêt.

"Leave the weapon and walk away," Richard had told him over the headset. And he had, the same way he had left the similar M14 rifle in the rented Washington, D.C., office four days earlier when he'd shot and killed the Colombian national wearing the New York Yankees jacket as the man emerged from Union Station.

• 7:50 A.M.

The train lurched and began to move forward. As it did, Victor saw a police car pull into the station parking lot and four heavily armed policemen emerge from it. For a moment he tensed, worried the stationmaster had been alerted and the train would be stopped, its passengers questioned about the incident that had taken place little more than ninety minutes earlier when two jockeys had been shot and killed on the Chantilly racecourse practice track by someone hiding in the woods.

Someone who was an excellent marksman and who had taken both men down with a single shot from a hundred yards away as they'd raced past on thoroughbreds running neck and neck, the bullet passing through the skull of one rider and then a hundredth of a second later through that of the other. Someone who, as the riderless horses ran on, left the murder weapon behind and simply walked away in the gray morning mist of the Coeur de la Forêt.

• 7:52 A.M.

The train picked up speed and in a blink the Chantilly-Gouvieux station was out of sight. Victor sat back and relaxed. Richard had told him there was nothing to worry about, to take his time, have coffee, even breakfast, and not make a show of leaving; and he'd been right. At every step, Richard had been right.

He looked out the window and watched the French countryside pass by. Here, as in Coeur de la Forêt, the deciduous trees were beginning to leaf out. Bright green and filled with the hope of a glorious summer. He felt happy, even mischievous and, most particularly, alive.

Like a boy who had just turned fourteen and was gobbling up the world around him.

69

• RURAL FOOTHILLS NORTHEAST OF BARCELONA, 7:55 A.M.

Aterrible thudding roar followed by a huge shadow passing directly overhead made the young driver of the farm truck suddenly slow and look up through its cracked windshield. For an instant he saw nothing but fruit trees and sky; then a Mossos d'Esquadra jet helicopter came straight toward him over the treetops. In a blink it was gone. Five seconds later another police helicopter followed, this one flying lower than the first and blinding them in a storm of whirling dust.

"¿Qué demonios pasa?" What the hell? he cried out and looked wide-eyed at the two young farmworkers squeezed into the seat beside him.

In the next instant two Mossos d'Esquadra cars screamed down the dirt road directly in front of him. Two more raced in from the rear.

"¡Joder!" he yelled. Immediately his right foot slammed the brake pedal and the truck slid to a stop in the whirlwind of dust kicked up by the police cars and the helicopters hovering just overhead, one two hundred feet higher than the other.

Seconds later the three men were facedown in the dirt, uniformed police everywhere, submachine guns at their heads. The doors to the truck were thrown wide open.

Slowly the driver dared to look up. When he did he saw men in dark suits and sunglasses emerge from unmarked cars that had come in from the grove on either side and start toward them. Then something else caught his eye. A huge, polished black SUV appeared through the shade of the orchard trees and slowly approached.

"¡Dios mío! ¿Que ha pasado?" My God, what is it? The young worker next to him breathed.

"¡Cállate!" Shut up! A barrel-chested policeman shoved the barrel of his submachine hard against the side of his head.

Hap Daniels was the first from the SUV. Then came Bill Strait. Then Jake Lowe and then James Marshall. Daniels glanced at them and then started for the truck.

The whirling dust and the thudding roar from the police helicopters overhead made it almost impossible to see, let alone hear or think. Daniels said something into his headset, and almost immediately the helicopters moved up and away to hover five or six hundred feet higher. The dust settled and the sound diminished.

Lowe and Marshall watched Daniels reach the truck, look inside the cab, then walk around it. Seconds later he motioned to one of the Mossos d'Esquadra officers to climb into the vehicle's open staked flatbed. A second policeman followed. Immediately two of Hap Daniels's dark-suited, sunglass-wearing Secret Service agents joined them.

"It's right there, sir," Daniels heard the voice of the curly-haired intel specialist from inside the SUV come through his headset.

"Where?"

"Somewhere near their feet."

"Here!" One of the agents said sharply.

Lowe and Marshall rushed forward. The special agents helped Daniels into the truck and then showed him.

Nicholas Marten's cell phone lay in a large cardboard box filled with irrigation equipment, hose connectors, and sprinkler heads. No apparent effort had been made to conceal it. It was right on top, as if someone had walked by, seen the box, and dropped it in.

Hap Daniels stared at it for a long moment, then slowly turned and looked off. This time there was no need curse out loud. His expression said everything.

The game was still on.

70

• 8:07 A.M.

Miguel Balius pressed down on the accelerator, and the Mercedes picked up speed. They were headed away from the coast and toward the mountains. Earlier he had avoided a checkpoint for vehicles leaving Barcelona simply by heading back toward it. Several miles later he'd taken a side road near Palau de Plegamans, then turned north onto a country highway. Shortly afterward Cousin Harold had asked how to use the limousine's phone, saying he wanted to place a call abroad. Miguel had explained and Cousin Harold had picked up the phone and punched in a number. Quite obviously he'd reached his party because he chatted for a few brief moments, then hung up and turned to talk with Cousin Jack. Several minutes later he'd made his one and only stop-at the edge of a dusty apple grove, where Cousin Harold relieved himself behind a parked farm truck. As quickly they were off again.

Whoever his passengers were they were clearly middle-class Americans, hardly the terrorists the government troops were searching for, or at least the dark-skinned Islamic stereotypes he and most of the world had come to expect when the word "terrorist" was mentioned. His customers were jet-lagged and tired and simply wanted to spend the day away from the city and seeing the sights, with Montserrat as their current destination. If they didn't relish going through the traffic backups and tedious procedures of roadblocks and checkpoints, neither did he. Besides, there was nothing illegal in what he was doing. It was his job to do what his clients asked, not wait in lines of traffic.

Miguel glanced in the mirror at his passengers and saw them watching the small television screen. They came to see the countryside and were watching TV. What the hell, he said to himself, it's their business.

And it was their business.

Wholly.

The attention of both men was locked on the small screen, where a female CNN reporter was doing a live stand-up in front of the White House, where it was still early morning. There had been no further reports on the circumstances of the president's hasty middle-of-the-night retreat from the Hotel Ritz in Madrid, she said. Nor was there information on the location where he had been taken, nor anything definitive about the nature of the terrorist threat or the terrorists themselves. But the people thought to be directly responsible had been traced to Barcelona, where they narrowly escaped a police raid and were now the subject of a massive manhunt that covered most of Spain and led all the way to the French border.

The piece ended and CNN went to a commercial. At the same time the president picked up the TV's remote and pressed the mute button and the television went silent.

"The Warsaw assassinations," he said to Marten quietly. "On a normal day I would have immediate access to the French and German leaders and could warn them personally. I no longer have that luxury. Still, somehow, the president of France and the chancellor of Germany must be told of the danger at Warsaw, and I don't know how to do it."

"You're certain it will be Warsaw?" Marten asked.

"Yes, I'm certain. They want to make a public show of it to instantly gain world sympathy for the people of Germany and France. It will help smooth the call for rapid elections in both countries and work to quell any political infighting that might keep their people from being elected."

"Then we need to find a way to alert them in a way that's not tied directly to you."

"Yes."

"What about the media? What if it came from The New York Times, The Washington Post, the L.A. Times, CNN or any other major news organization?"

"Who's going to tell them? Me? It's impossible for me to use any electronic communications device, period. Neither can you. You took Peter Fadden's call. They will have recorded your voice. They will be listening as much for yours as mine. At one point I even thought about entrusting Ms. Picard but decided against it for any number of reasons, primarily because no one would believe her, and if she tried to explain and the tabloids got hold of it there would be a massive story that the president had run away from the Secret Service and gone crazy. It's the last thing we need."

"What about Fadden himself?" Marten said.

"I considered that. He has the credibility to call the press secretaries of both people and be put through. He could tell them he has classified information that comes from the very highest sources and then alert them to what is to happen in Warsaw. If he did it that way they would take the warning very, very seriously and make certain it was passed on to their Secret Service people. The trouble is there's no way to reach him, even if we found a way to have a third party do it."

"Because he called me."

The president nodded somberly. "Every electronic transmission he makes or receives will be intercepted and his every move watched. I'm sure the Secret Service is all over him right now. I just hope for his sake that he stays in Madrid and doesn't press the issue of what he knows about Merriman Foxx or suspects about me. If he gets aggressive it could get him arrested, maybe even killed. So we're back to square one, Cousin. What in the damn hell to do now. We have this information that has to get out but there's no way to do it."

Marten was about to say something when something caught his eye. He looked toward the front of the car. Miguel Balius was watching them intently in the mirror. Whatever he was doing, Marten didn't like it. Immediately he pressed the intercom button, "What is it, Miguel?"

Miguel started in surprise. "Nothing, sir."

"Something must have interested you."

"It's just that your cousin, sir, well he seems vaguely familiar." Miguel was embarrassed to have been caught but told the truth anyway. He looked to the president, "I know I've seen you somewhere before."

The president smiled easily, "I don't know where that would have been. This is my first time in Barcelona."

"My memory's quite decent, sir, I'm sure I'll think of it." Miguel watched him a moment longer, then looked back to the road.

Marten glanced at the president, "Remember what Cousin Demi told them about us?"

"That we're a little crazy."

Marten nodded. "Now's the time to show it. Tell him before he figures it out."

The president was suddenly apprehensive, "Tell him what?"

Marten didn't reply. Instead he looked to Miguel and pressed the intercom. "You know why he looks familiar, Miguel?"

"Still working on it, sir."

"Well stop trying. He's the president of the United States."

President Harris felt his heart come up in his throat. Then he saw Marten grin broadly. Miguel Balius stared at them in the mirror and then a smile crept over his face as well.

"Of course he is, sir."

"You don't believe me, do you?" Marten kept on. "Well my cousin is the president of the United States. He's trying to have a day or two of peace and quiet away from the pressures of the job. That's why we wanted to avoid the roadblocks. It could be very dangerous if someone found out he was riding around without the Secret Service protecting him."

"That right, sir?" Miguel was looking at the president.

The president was caught; all he could do was go along. "I'm afraid you've guessed our secret. It's why we want to take back roads, farm roads, anything to stay off the beaten path."

Miguel's smile grew broader. They were playing with him and he knew it, "I understand your situation completely, sir. Later I can tell my grandkids I chauffeured you all over, took you to the beach, then helped you get the sand off your feet and drove you straight to Montserrat, all the while avoiding a thousand police roadblocks set up to nab terrorists."

Abruptly Marten tensed. "You have grandchildren, Miguel?"

"Not yet, sir. My daughter's expecting."

Marten relaxed. "Congratulations on becoming a grandfather. But you understand you're not to tell anyone else about this, not your daughter, not even your wife."

Miguel Balius raised a ceremonious hand from the steering wheel. "On my word, sir, not a soul. 'Discreet' is the company motto."

Marten smiled, "All in a day's work."

"Yes, sir. All in a day's work."

Marten sat back and looked at the president. Harris's expression said everything. Miguel was one thing. The problem of Warsaw and how to warn the leaders of France and Germany about what lay ahead was something else entirely. Something that, for the moment at least, there was nothing at all they could do to correct.

71

• THE HOTEL GRAND PALACE, BARCELONA, 8:40 A.M.

Jake Lowe and James Marshall entered a four-room suite reserved by White House Chief of Staff Tom Curran, still working out of the U.S. embassy in Madrid. Secret Service tech specialists had taken over one of the three bedrooms and were working quickly to set up a communications center that would include secure phones to the Madrid embassy and to the working war room at the White House. Neither man had slept in over twenty-four hours, and both were grubby and exhausted and sported stubble beards. Moreover, it had been some time since they'd had the luxury of an extended private conversation. Lowe led them into a small drawing room and closed the door.

"This nightmare gets longer by the minute," he said. "It's inconceivable that he can stay a step ahead of everything."

Marshall took off his suit jacket and draped it over the side of a chair, then flipped on a television set and found CNN. He watched for a moment and then crossed to where a light breakfast was spread out and poured himself a cup of coffee.

"Coffee?"

"No," Lowe ran a hand through his hair and walked over to look down at the street. A moment later he turned back, clearly troubled. "He's determined to break us. You know that."

"Yes, but he won't succeed."

"We had that same confidence in him before, remember?" Lowe said, his fatigue and anger coming through. "That's how he got to be president. And how he got out of the Ritz and why he is still out there on the loose."

"Let's examine it," Marshall said coldly, then with one eye on the television eased into a straight-backed chair. "First off, it still remains all but impossible for him to communicate with anyone electronically without us knowing about it and in turn knowing where he is. It's all that much harder for him now that we know the geographic area where he is. Add to that the size of the force hunting them. He and Marten may be needles in a haystack, but straw by straw the hay is being taken away. It's only a matter of time, hours at most, before the floor is bare and the needles are right there in front of us.

"Next, the vice president is on his way to Madrid for a secret conference with the Spanish president on the situation with POTUS."

"I know," Lowe snapped at something he was well aware of. "Should have wheels down there within the hour. What the hell's that got to do with it?"

"Everything. What our esteemed president has unwittingly done is give us an extraordinary opportunity to put the vice president front and center in the global war against terrorism. He's terrific at this stuff, almost as good as Harris himself. This is your territory, Jake, and you should smell it! Why keep his arrival a secret? He's as concerned about the war on terror as the president and in the president's absence he's stepping on Spanish soil to say so. Let's get him up here this afternoon, send him through the streets of Barcelona, jacket off, sleeves rolled up. Have him talk to some civilians, get him a few sound bites with Spanish police working the checkpoints. Let him tell the world how proud he is to be here representing America in the president's place. Have him state how seriously President Harris takes these security threats and how determined he is not to let them interfere with his appearance in Warsaw or the speech he will give to the NATO leaders gathered there, a speech he is personally working on while he remains in seclusion. What we have, Jake, is a one-in-a-million chance to show the world public that the vice president is a bona fide take-charge guy." Marshall smiled thinly, "just hours before tragic circumstances make him king of the hill."

"You're forgetting Peter Fadden," Lowe came back across the room. "He knows about Caroline Parsons, he suspects something about Mike Parsons's death, he knows the Merriman Foxx connection, and he's not buying the official line about what happened to the president. He keeps pushing, the next thing we've got The Washington Post right on top of us."

"I didn't forget Peter Fadden, Jake. As soon as we have a secure phone I'll make a call to Washington and make sure he stops pushing. As for the president, maybe we should hope Hap, the CIA, and Spanish intel don't find him at all."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean we would do well to trust that the Reverend Beck has sprinkled enough crumbs for Nicholas Marten to be well on his way to Montserrat in hopes of confronting Dr. Foxx. As we know from the hotel business last night, from the Fadden call this morning, and the little trick with the cell phone in the farm truck, he's doing everything he can to elude us. The only reason for that is because the president is with him. Both have a reason to confront Foxx and if they reach him before Hap finds them-" the slightest smile crossed Marshall's face-"Marten will vanish and we'll have the body of a president we can fly to the 'undisclosed location' where he 'already is' and where he unfortunately suffered a sudden heart attack or something else Dr. Foxx will deem more appropriate. The whole thing would be much simpler and cleaner that way anyhow, don't you think?"

Lowe looked to the television. A CNN story about a plane crash in Peru was followed by live coverage from Barcelona and the massive ongoing search for the fugitive terrorists in which twenty-seven people had already been arrested and more arrests were expected.

Lowe clicked off the TV and turned to Marshall. Sweat glistened on his forehead. His normally ruddy complexion was pale. Deep weariness was taking hold.

"I'm tired, Jim. Tired of thinking. Tired of this whole damn thing. Make your call to Washington and then grab an hour's sleep. It's what I'm going to do. We need it, both of us."

72

• 9:00 A.M.

Miguel Balius glanced in the mirror at his two passengers on the far side of the privacy glass, then looked back at the curving country highway in front of him. This was the second rural road he had taken in the last forty minutes, both to avoid roadblocks. The first had come on a major highway leading into the hills toward Tarrasa when he'd seen vehicles in front of him suddenly slowing and then being directed into a single lane by heavily armed police. His solution had been simply to take the next exit and work his way through a network of suburban streets to the town of Ullastrell and then follow a secondary road south to a highway that swung them north again toward Montserrat. It was on that road, at Abrera, where he'd run into the second roadblock. Here he had reversed course and taken a side road that skirted the town of Olesa de Montserrat and put him onto the curving highway where they were now, headed northwest into the mountains toward Montserrat, a long way around but better than being caught at a roadblock and having the authorities discover that his passengers were the president of the United States and his cousin.

Miguel laughed to himself. He had been told when he'd started that he should expect them to be a little "loco." And they were. But he'd driven people a lot crazier than these two-rock stars, movie stars, national soccer heroes, tennis icons, men with other men's wives, women with other women's husbands, men with other men, women with other women, people about whom he couldn't tell who was either, in sex or relationship-and so this was nothing. He just grinned and went along with it. To him, as the "cousin" called Harold had said, it was "all in a day's work" and if the balding man with glasses and a light growth of beard did somehow look familiar he certainly didn't look like the president of the United States. But if he wanted to act as if he were-the most powerful man in the world taking a day or two off from the pressures of office and asking to avoid roadblocks along the way-it was fine by him.

Did the thought cross his mind once again that these two might be the terrorists the authorities were looking for? Of course, especially when they kept insisting he avoid roadblocks and checkpoints. But on closer examination he felt as he had before, that they hardly resembled the kind of people the world over had come to expect a terrorist to look like. Moreover, what terrorists rented a limousine, went barefoot drinking coffee at the beach, and then drove around seeing the sights and pretending to be the president of the United States and his cousin while the authorities were everywhere looking for them?

Again he glanced at his passengers. The one called Cousin Harold had taken a pad of limousine stationery and was writing something on it. Done, he handed it to the one called Cousin Jack when he wasn't playing president of the United States. Miguel grinned once more and looked back to the road. What were they doing now, playing tic-tac-toe?

"It's the sign of Aldebaran." Marten indicated the diagram of a balled cross he'd drawn on the limousine stationery and handed to President Harris. "The pale red star that forms the left eye in the constellation Taurus," he went on, repeating what Demi had told him the day before in Els Quatre Gats, in Barcelona. "In the early history of astrology it was considered to emanate a powerful and fortunate influence. It is also called-"

"The Eye of God," the president said.

"How do-?" Marten was astounded.

"I know?" President Harris smiled gently, "I was a Rhodes scholar, Mr. Marten. I studied at Oxford. My major was European history, my secondary study was theology. The sign of Aldebaran figured in each, if not prominently, but it was certainly there if it was pointed out and one had the kind of demanding, detail-oriented professors I did. The sign of Aldebaran is thought to have been used as an identifying mark by a secretive cult of sorcerers that may have held strong political influence in Europe during and after the Renaissance, and perhaps even in following centuries. It's not known for certain, because the movement, if indeed there was one, left behind no documents or written history, at least that we know of. All that remains is rumor and supposition."

"Let me add another piece of rumor and supposition from the Renaissance era. The Machiavelli Covenant. Do you know of it?"

"No."

"Allegedly Machiavelli wrote an addendum to his famous The Prince," again Marten repeated what Demi had told him. "In it he created the concept of a secret society made powerful by its members' documented participation in a yearly, very elaborate ritual killing. The idea was that deliberate and verified complicity in murder bound them together in blood and gave them license to operate very aggressively, even ruthlessly, as a group knowing they could all hang if what they had done was found out. It would have made for a pretty intimidating bunch, especially if those involved were members of an already powerful and influential group."

The president's eyes narrowed. "What does that or the sign of Aldebaran have to do with-?"

"You said a secretive cult of sorcerers," Marten cut him off. "Were they sorcerers or witches?"

"It depends on where and what era you're referring to."

"What if I said here and now, Mr. President."

"I don't understand."

"Merriman Foxx has the sign of Aldebaran tattooed on his left thumb. Reverend Beck may have one as well. It's not possible to tell without close examination because he has a skin pigmentation disorder. Caroline Parsons's doctor, Lorraine Stephenson, had the same tattoo. So, according to Demi, did her missing sister. These people are members of a secretive coven of witches that takes as its identifying symbol the mark of Aldebaran." Marten glanced past the security glass. Miguel's eyes were on the road. If he could hear them now-he could have been listening in all along-he gave no indication of it. Marten looked back to the president.

"You said strong political influence, Mr. President? What if this is more than just something between your 'friends' and Merriman Foxx? What if it involves the witches too? What if the Machiavelli Covenant is not some rumored codicil to The Prince but real? Something a particular group took as its bible and put into practice? What if your secretive cult of sorcerers actually did exist? What if it still does? And not just in Europe but in Washington?"

President Harris took a deep breath and Marten could see the awful pressure of what was happening beginning to take its toll, both as a man and as president. "If there is truly an answer to that, perhaps Dr. Foxx will be able to provide it." The president looked at Marten for a moment longer then turned toward the window to stare at the passing countryside. If anything, he seemed even more troubled and introspective than before.

"We are going to Montserrat, Mr. Marten, hopefully to find Dr. Foxx and confront him," he said, still staring off. "Never mind what he did as a scientist, the experiments he performed, the weapons he developed-he was also a professional soldier most of his life." Now the president turned from the window to look at Marten directly. "He may be in his late fifties, but from what I've read about him he's fit and strong. And tough. The damnable project we have to know about he's probably been working on for years, developing it to the point where it's now ready for use. Why do we think he will tell us anything about it? There is no reason to believe he will say anything at all. Why should he? If I were him and in the same situation I certainly wouldn't." A look of despair came over him. "I wonder, Mr. Marten, if after everything, we are not prepared for the adversary we may be lucky enough to face. If he will just laugh at our questions and in the end we will have nothing."

"I think, Mr. President," Marten said quietly and with strength, "it will depend on where and under what circumstances the questions are put to him."

73

• HOTEL OPERA, MADRID, 9:22 A.M

"Muchas gracias," Peter Fadden nodded appreciatively to the front desk clerk. Then, scrawling his name on the credit card receipt, he picked up his bag and headed for the front door, already late for his eleven o'clock flight to Barcelona.

Outside, the hotel doorman signaled for a taxi. It pulled up and stopped, then immediately drove off without a fare. Fadden and the doorman exchanged surprised glances; then the doorman signaled for the next cab in line. Like the first cab, it pulled up and stopped. Only this time the driver did not drive off. Instead he got out and looked at the doorman for a directive.

"Aeropuerto de Barajas," Fadden said before the doorman could answer. Then he tipped him, pulled the rear passenger door open, tossed his bag onto the seat, and climbed in after it. Seconds later the taxi pulled away.

• BARCELONA POLICE HEADQUARTERS, SAME TIME

Hap Daniels and Special Agent Bill Strait were, like the rest of the Secret Service contingent who had flown up from Madrid, physically and mentally drained and feeling grubby as hell from the more than twenty-four hours of intense, nonstop insanity. While rooms had been reserved for them at the Hotel Colón across from the cathedral of Barcelona, temporary sleeping quarters had been set up here in a basement-level meeting room next to the central command headquarters, where a group of thirty-six Barcelona police, Spanish intel, CIA, and U.S. Secret Service agents labored over a communications system jammed with information coming in from checkpoints and search teams. A group overseen by Hap himself.

"Twenty minutes," he said to the command team, flashing ten fingers two times. "Twenty minutes is all I need."

Immediately he motioned for Bill Strait and went into the sleeping area, where a half dozen other Secret Service agents napped on hastily set-up cots and where he planned to lie down and close his eyes for those precious twenty minutes.

Strait came in and Hap closed the door, then walked his deputy to a far corner and away from the others.

"What's going on is not foul play," he said in a sotto voice. "It's not the work of terrorists or some foreign government or agents. This is 'Crop Duster,' the POTUS, trying to get away."

"I don't understand your point, Hap," Strait said in the same low voice. "We've been going on that premise since Madrid. He's ill."

"If he's ill I'm a three-legged donkey. He shinnied out of the Ritz's air-conditioning ducts. Took off a hairpiece we never knew he had and made it from Madrid to Barcelona without being seen. He found Marten without anybody knowing, and he got out of the damn hotel and out of the city right under our noses. This is not somebody who's ill. It's somebody who's determined as hell not to be caught and is being damned smart about it."

"People do all kinds of things when they're screwed up, Hap. Even presidents."

"We don't know he's screwed up. All we know is what we've been told by Lowe and Dr. Marshall. And unless there's something they're not telling us, they're just guessing. Either that or it's what they want us to believe."

"Want us to believe?"

"Yes."

Strait stared at him. "You're tired. Tell me that in a half-hour when you wake up."

"I'm telling you right now."

"Okay, then what the hell is going on?"

Just then an agent on the cot nearest them coughed and rolled over in his sleep. Daniels glanced around the room, then led Strait through an adjoining door and into a vacant men's restroom.

"I don't know what's going on," he said the moment they were alone. "But I think back to that late meeting at Evan Byrd's house in Madrid. The people who were there, the vice president and almost the entire cabinet, Crop Duster wasn't expecting them to be there, and he wasn't the same when he came out of the talks with them. The whole ride back to the hotel he was quiet and distant, never said a word. A few hours later he's gone, lighting his way with matches he picked up at Byrd's house. Not long afterward he ends up with this Nicholas Marten who he asked me to check up on before any of this began."

Daniels took off his jacket and loosened his tie, "I'm going to lie down and close my eyes for twenty minutes. Maybe when I wake up, things will be clearer. In the meantime I want you to go outside, go someplace you won't be overheard, use your cell phone, and call Emilio Vasquez at Spanish intel in Madrid. Ask him to very quietly put an electronic intercept on Evan Byrd's phones. He might not like it, but tell him it's a personal favor to me. If he has trouble doing it, tell him I'll call him myself when I get up."

"You think Evan Byrd has something to do with this?"

"I don't know. I don't even have a thought about what this is. I just want to see who he's in touch with and what they have to say to each other."

74

• MADRID, 9:30 A.M.

Peter Fadden watched the city pass in a blur, barely aware of the taxi's blaring radio playing American rock 'n' roll oldies, his psyche a churning jumble of conflict, exhilaration, and dread. He had called Nicholas Marten because he was certain he was onto something that involved the president, what had happened to Caroline and Mike Parsons and their son, and the congressional hearings surrounding the testimony of Merriman Foxx. And because the center of a huge and intense manhunt for what Spanish authorities were calling "fugitive terrorists" was concentrated right where Marten was, Barcelona.

He had talked to Marten just after seven, little more than two hours earlier, a conversation Marten had abruptly ended by telling him he would get back to him as soon as he could. So far that hadn't happened, and three attempts to reach him had achieved nothing more than a connection to his voice mail. So where was he? What the hell had happened?

If Fadden was right and the authorities were looking for a person or persons other than terrorists, as far as he'd been able to tell none of the other media people had yet picked up on it. That meant if he could break it he just might have an exclusive on an incident of major political, even historic, proportions.

The question was how to handle it. He had been around far too long not to know that if he called his editor at The Washington Post, no matter how confidential their conversation, whatever he said would be reported to the executive editor. Because of it, there was every chance someone in the Washington press corps would learn about it, and soon the flood gates would open and he would be trampled in a stampede of others rushing to the scene; and that was something he wasn't about to let happen.

• 9:35 A.M.

Fadden watched the familiar landscape. They were on Calle de Alcalá and about to pass Madrid's famous bull ring, the Plaza de Toros. Moments later they would be crossing Avenida de la Paz. Fadden knew the way to the airport well. In five years as a Washington Post foreign correspondent in London, two in Rome, two in Paris, and one in Istanbul, he had been to Madrid countless times. By his calculation and with the flow of traffic, he should reach the terminal in less than twenty minutes, giving him just enough breathing room to make his Iberia flight to Barcelona.

• 9:37 A.M.

They passed Avenida de la Paz, and Fadden took a moment to close his eyes. He'd been up into the early morning talking to everyday staff at the Ritz-busboys, maids, kitchen, cleaning, and maintenance people, night managers, hotel security. Afterward he'd worked in his hotel room until nearly four making notes. At six thirty he was up showering and making his airline reservations and then calling Nick Marten. A little over two hours' sleep-no wonder he was tired.

Suddenly he felt the taxi slow. He opened his eyes as the driver made a right turn onto a side street and continued down it.

"Where are you going?" he snapped. "This isn't the way to the airport."

"I am sorry, señor," the driver said in broken English. "There is nothing I can do about it."

"About what?"

The driver glanced in the rearview mirror. "Them."

Fadden turned around. A black car was right behind them. Two men wearing dark glasses were in the front seat.

"Who the hell are they?"

"I'm sorry, señor. I have to stop."

"Stop? Why?"

"I'm sorry."

Immediately the driver pulled to the curb, the oldies American rock still blasting from the radio. An instant later he threw open the door, then got out and took off on the dead run, never looking back.

"Jesus God!" Fadden blurted, fear and realization stabbing through him. His hand went to the handle and he shoved the door open. His feet hit the curb just as the black car slid to a stop behind. He didn't even look, just took off running. Seconds later he reached a cross street and ran into it without looking. A blast of horn was followed by a shriek of tires. Fadden went up on his toes, pirouetted like a running back, and dodged around a blue Toyota van that nearly hit him. Then he was on the far sidewalk and charging into a small plaza. He darted left and then right around a fountain. Then took the gravel path on the far side of it. A brief glance over his shoulder and he could see them coming. They wore jeans and sweatshirts and had military haircuts. They looked and felt American.

"Christ!" he breathed, and kept on.

Just ahead he saw a shrub-lined pathway leading from the plaza and onto the street beyond. Lungs on fire, he took it. Ahead he saw a stopped city bus letting off passengers. There was no reason to look back. They would still be coming. The bus was still thirty feet away and he was running with everything he had. He fully expected a blow from behind or a flying tackle that would take his legs out from under him. Twenty feet more, then ten. The bus door was starting to close.

"Wait!" he yelled, "wait!" The door opened again just as he reached it. In a heartbeat he was onboard, the door closed and the bus pulled away.

75

• MANCHESTER, ENGLAND. THE BANFIELD COUNTRY

ESTATE,

HALIFAX road. 9:43 A.M.

A heavy mist hung across the rolling deep green fields. Rain clouds drifted above the distant hills. From the hilltop where Ian Graff stood he could see the river and if he turned, the Banfields' newly constructed great house-all twelve thousand square feet of the glass, steel and stone of it. None of which suited English history or the rolling rural setting where it sat. But it was the landscape Fitzsimmons and Justice had been paid to design not the house. It was the landscape, this damp Saturday morning, he had come to once again, plans rolled up and tucked under his arm, to survey one last time before presenting them-no thanks at all to Nicholas Marten-to Robert Fitzsimmons who would again submit them to the young, newly very wealthy, newly married, very testy, Mr. and Mrs. Banfield.

Graff twisted his jacket collar up against the mist and was just turning his Wellington-booted feet back toward the main house when he saw the dark blue Rover sedan parked at the bottom of the hill and two men in raincoats coming up the muddy path toward him.

"Mr. Ian Graff," the first man, stocky and black-haired with a touch of gray at the temples, called out. It wasn't a question as much as the voice of authority. They knew who he was.

"Yes."

The second man was tall and his hair was all gray. He reached into his raincoat pocket as he drew closer and took out a small leather case. He flipped it open and held it up, "John Harrison, Security Service, this is Special Agent Russell. One hour and twenty minutes ago you placed a call from your office to the cell phone of a Nicholas Marten."

"Yes. Why? Is he in some sort of trouble?"

"Why did you make the call?"

"I am his supervisor at the architectural landscape firm of Fitzsimmons and Justice."

"Please answer the question," Agent Russell moved closer.

"I called him because he asked me to. If you look around you will see the acreage that we are about to begin landscaping. Among the many plantings are to be azaleas. He was working on the plan and asked me to go down the azalea list because he had forgotten the name of a specific type he wished to use. I retrieved the list and called him and recited the names."

"Then what?"

"The connection went dead. I tried calling him back but I had no luck."

"You said he asked you to call him," Agent Russell spoke again. "Are you saying he called you and asked you to call him back?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes. He called my house thinking it was Saturday and I would be at home. My housekeeper took the call and then relayed the message to me at my office."

"Your housekeeper."

"Yes, sir. Although I'm not sure why he called the house. He knew I would be at the office, we are far behind on a critical project. This one," Graff gestured at house and the land around them.

Agent Harrison stared at Graff for a moment longer, then glanced at the surrounding countryside. "Nice piece of dirt. Don't like the house though, style doesn't fit."

"I agree with you, sir."

"Thank you for your time, Mr. Graff."

With that Security Service agents Harrison and Russell turned and started back through the mud for their car.

"Is he in trouble?" Graff called after them. "Is Mr. Marten in trouble with the government?"

There was no reply.

76

• MADRID, 10:15 A.M.

Peter Fadden had ridden the city bus for two stops, gotten off, then walked a half block where he turned down a side street and entered a small café sprinkled with a few midmorning customers. Immediately he went to the men's restroom. Several moments later he came out, glanced down the hallway into the kitchen and established that there was a rear entrance and way out if he needed it. Satisfied, he went back into the main room and took a seat at a table where he could see the door and ordered a cup of coffee.

He had his wallet, his passport, his BlackBerry, and, for the moment at least, his life and his freedom. The rest-his suitcase and his briefcase containing his laptop-he'd left in the taxi, things the men who'd come after him would now have in their possession. It was the laptop that concerned him most. The hard drive contained all of his notes: his interviews with hotel staff people at the Madrid Ritz, his collection of material about Merriman Foxx, Dr. Lorraine Stephenson, the Washington, D.C., clinic where Caroline Parsons had been taken before she was admitted to University Hospital, and his suspicions about the manhunt in Barcelona and the possible fate of the president.

The problem now was what to do about all of it.

At this point he desperately wanted to get in touch with his editor at The Washington Post but he knew that was problematical at best. The only way the men who had come after him could have known who he was was because they had been tapped into the frequency of Marten's cell phone. It meant they had heard their conversation, probably even recorded it. Worse, it meant they had the number of his BlackBerry, which was no doubt how they found him at his hotel and probably the reason the first taxi had driven away without picking him up-because the second had a driver who worked for them and would do as he was told. It was the reason he had taken the side street as he had and then pulled the taxi to the curb and run away.

Now that they had his BlackBerry frequency they would be monitoring it, so he couldn't use it without giving his position away. Moreover, because he had said what he had about the president and Mike Parsons's committee and Merriman Foxx, he could be all but certain the phone numbers and e-mail addresses of anyone listed in his BlackBerry Rolodex-nearly everyone he knew in Washington and in Post bureaus around the world-would be under surveillance as well. Who was doing all this, he had no idea, but it had to be at a very high level if they were monitoring Marten's cell phone and then, so soon afterward, sending the crewcuts after him. The business of the taxi cabs meant they hadn't been sent to have a simple conversation with him. That they could have done at the hotel.

Topping off everything was the element of time. Whatever was happening was happening fast. If the president was in trouble, he was in trouble right now. It meant Fadden had to find someone out of the loop. Someone who had a prestigious voice that would be listened to and whom he could trust unconditionally needed to be told about it as quickly as possible.

• 10:22 A.M.

Fadden entered a small tobacco shop four doors down from the café. He glanced around, then went up to the only other person in there, the shop's heavyset proprietor sitting behind the counter smoking a cigar.

"Do you speak English?"

"Poco." A little. The man said.

"I would like to buy a phone card."

"Sí," the man said, "sí," and stood up.

• WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND. 10:27 A.M.

Dr. Matunde Ngotho, executive director of the WHO/OMS Human Genetics Program, had just left a Saturday-morning investigative conference and was entering his office on Avenue Appia when his cell phone rang.

"Matunde here," he said, clicking on.

"Matunde, it's Peter Fadden."

"Peter!" the research doctor smiled broadly at the voice of his old and dear friend. "Where are you? In Geneva I hope. Yes?"

Matunde waited for a response. He got none.

"Peter?" he said. "Peter, are you there?"

Peter Fadden stood frozen in place, staring wide-eyed at the tall crew-cut man standing just behind him at the street corner public telephone. For some reason he felt cold though the temperature outside was nearly eighty degrees. Now the crewcut reached in and lifted the receiver from his hand and hung it up on the phone's cradle. Vaguely Fadden remembered reaching his old college roommate in Geneva. Remembered hearing his voice and at the same time feeling a sharp pain near his right kidney, as if a needle had suddenly been inserted and then withdrawn. He saw an umbrella in the crewcut's hand. He wondered why. It wasn't raining. In fact there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

77

• 10:30 A.M.

Nicholas Marten stared vacantly out the window as Miguel Balius maneuvered the limousine over a narrow bridge spanning a muddy river. A full minute passed and then two, then Marten's focus abruptly sharpened as if he had just completed a thought process. With a glance at President Harris, he touched the intercom button.

"Miguel?"

"Yes, sir."

"You must have been to Montserrat before."

"Many times."

"What's it like?"

"Like? Like a small city built into a mountainside half a mile straight up from the valley floor. A feat of incredible engineering."

The president sat forward, suddenly aware that Marten was gathering information and in the process working on a plan for what they might do when they got there.

"There are many buildings, some centuries old; the basilica, a museum, a hotel that has a restaurant, there's a library, a refectory, too many to list." Miguel bubbled with the enthusiasm of a tour guide, alternately looking at Marten in the mirror and watching the road in front of him as he drove. "You can drive to it or reach it by cable car from the valley floor. A funicular railway takes you higher into the cliffs if you want. All around are pathways that go off in every direction. Some have ancient chapels along the way, but most are long abandoned and nothing but ruins. The saying goes there are 'a thousand and one paths that crisscross the mountain.' You won't be disappointed. But be warned, it will be crowded. It always is. Montserrat has become as much a tourist stop as a religious retreat."

"There's a chance we might meet some friends there," Marten dug deeper. "You said there's a restaurant. If we wanted to have lunch, is it just a sandwich shop or is there more to it?"

"No, not a sandwich shop. A regular restaurant. Tables and chairs, everything."

"Do you know if they serve soft drinks? Colas, mineral water, things like that? I ask because one of the gentlemen has a personal medical situation and has certain needs because of it."

"Sure, colas, mineral water, coffee, wine, beer, anything you want."

The president listened carefully. Marten was asking very specific questions, as if he knew precisely what he wanted.

"Is there a restroom, you know, a toilet, nearby? I wouldn't want to suggest something that wouldn't be appropriate for his condition."

This part Harris understood. Marten was trying find a public place where Merriman Foxx might meet him and then a place not far off where they could get him alone.

"I think, yes," Miguel kept his eyes on the road. "It's in the back, near the door where they bring in the supplies."

Marten perked. "A door that leads outside?"

"Yes, sir."

"This door, is it near any of the thousand and one pathways you mentioned? Say if we wanted to take a walk after lunch."

"Right you are, sir," Miguel beamed, his Australian accent and his years there creeping through, clearly enjoying the part of helpful host. "One way goes down to the loading dock, the other up the hill and into the mountain trails. In fact one of the old ruined chapels is right up the trail from it."

"You paint a wonderful picture, Miguel."

"It's my job, sir. Besides, Montserrat is wonderful. At least for the first fifty visits or so."

Marten smiled, then clicked off the intercom and looked to the president. "Before, I suggested the way to get answers from Foxx depended on where and under what circumstances the questions were put to him. If we play it right and we're lucky we can get him up that path to the chapel alone. After that it might have to get physical."

"Go on."

"We get to Montserrat and let Demi find us. When she does I'll arrange to meet Foxx and suggest the restaurant. If he agrees, the two of us will come in and find a table near the back. Meantime you're already there, at a table near the door to the rear pathway. You've got your big hat on, you're drinking something and have your head down, maybe reading a newspaper. He doesn't even look at you. Or if he does he has no idea who you are. Hopefully no one else does either.

"Foxx and I sit down, look at the menu, talk about nothing for a few minutes. Then I tell him I'm not comfortable having a serious exchange in public and suggest we go for a walk alone outside. The door's there, probably with an exit sign. I ask the waiter where it goes. He tells me. I ask Foxx if it's okay with him. Even if he's got people with him he'll agree because he wants to know what I know. We get up and go out the door. Thirty seconds later you follow. By then we should be up the path and nearing the chapel."

"You think he'll go? Just like that?"

"I told you, he wants to know about me and will have no reason to suspect anything. Montserrat is his call not mine. If he's nervous I'll tell him he can frisk me, I have nothing to hide."

The president studied Marten carefully. "Alright, so everything works and you're alone on the path with him and near the chapel."

"We see you coming up the trail behind us. I suggest we go inside, have our talk in there in case more people come."

"What if he doesn't want to go? I told you before, he's been a professional soldier most of his life. He's tough and wary-he's not going to do something he doesn't want to."

"This time he will."

"How do you know?"

"He won't have a choice."

Again the president studied him, was ready to ask what he meant and then decided not to push it. "Then what?"

"You used to work on a farm, didn't you?"

The president nodded.

"Ever try to hold down a reluctant pig or calf while the vet gave it a shot?"

"Yes."

"Were you able to do it?"

"Yes."

"Well, it'll be sort of the same thing here. And it's going to take two of us, the vet and the handler. I'm afraid you're going to have to get your hands a little bit dirty."

"I have no trouble with the manual-labor part, not in this situation." The president cocked his head. "I just don't get what you mean to do. We have no access to drugs or hypodermic syringes. Even if we did there's no time to-"

"The restaurant, Cousin. Everything we will need will either be on the table or on the menu."

78

• 10:37 A.M.

They were twenty minutes out of Barcelona, heading north and west on the A2 autopista. The van was white. Its driver, a large man named Raphael. Painted on its doors in a black scroll were the words of its origin and destination: Monasterio Benedictino de Montserrat.

Reverend Beck and Luciana rode in the seats directly in back of Raphael. Demi was behind them, alone in the third row of seats, her camera gear and equipment bag beside her. She was looking off, trying not to think of Nicholas Marten and the president and what she had done. Or rather of what she'd decided she had no choice but to do.

Ever since Marten's confrontation with Dr. Foxx in Malta it had been clear that both Foxx and Reverend Beck had been upset. In turn she had been afraid it would spoil, even end, her relationship with Beck. And she thought it had when he'd so unexpectedly left the island the next morning, but then the concierge had called with the reverend's apology and his invitation to Barcelona.

Shortly after she had arrived at his suite at the Regente Majestic and been introduced to Luciana. He had surprised her by saying he understood that her interest in him was due not to his religious vocation but to his association with the Aldebaran coven, which he guessed was the real subject of her book, and not the purported photo essay on "clerics who minister to prominent politicians." Moreover, he'd told her he believed the reason she had tagged along on his European trip was because she knew he was coming to the coven's yearly gathering.

But instead of demanding she leave immediately he surprised her once more, telling her he had discussed her with the coven's elders and they had agreed to open up their proceedings, even allowing her to take photographs. In truth, there was nothing at all evil about the coven and at this point in history they felt there was no reason to keep their rituals secret.

Still, they required a quid pro quo: Nicholas Marten.

"As you have suspected," Beck told her, "Dr. Foxx is a member of the coven. He is currently at the monastery at Montserrat preparing for the coven's assembly. His falling out with Marten in Malta over his congressional testimony in Washington is a situation he is still upset about. He would like to clear the air before any more time passes and before any of it finds its way into the press."

If Marten would come to Montserrat, Beck would arrange a private meeting between the two, something he was certain Marten would agree to: "Otherwise he wouldn't have followed you to Barcelona and then taken you to lunch at Els Quatre Gats. Undoubtedly he thinks you might bring him and Dr. Foxx together."

If Demi was startled by Beck's knowledge of her meeting with Marten, she didn't show it. As for his revelation that she knew about the Aldebaran coven and his involvement with it, he seemed content with the idea that her interest was merely professional, a writer and photographer's search for a story. Moreover, all he had asked was what Marten himself had asked, that she tell him where Dr. Foxx would be and when.

What she had not known at the time, nor had she told anyone since, was that a second person would be accompanying Marten to Montserrat: the president of the United States.

79

• BARCELONA POLICE HEADQUARTERS

SPECIAL COMMUNICATIONS ROOM. 10:45 A.M.

Hap Daniels had just come in from his twenty-minute catnap. He was pulling on his headset and looking around for Bill Strait, anxious to know if he'd reached Spanish intel in Madrid and arranged the electronic tap on Evan Byrd's phones, when a familiar voice crackled through his earpiece.

"Hap, it's Roley." It was Roland Sandoval, the Secret Service special agent in charge of Vice President Hamilton Rogers's protective detail. Daniels knew Rogers had secretly arrived in Madrid a short while ago and gone directly to the U.S. embassy to join White House Chief of Staff Tom Curran for a scheduled private meeting with the president of Spain to discuss the disappearance of President Harris.

"Yes, Roley."

"We've just cleared the vice president for a wheels down at Barcelona at thirteen-hundred. After that he has an hour tour of the area."

"Tour of the area? Why? Why the hell now?"

"That's direct from the chief of staff. Acting White House wants to show the country's concern for the terrorist situation even while POTUS is 'out of touch.' Afterward he'll come back to Madrid and spend the night at Evan Byrd's home before his meeting with the Spanish prime minister tomorrow."

Daniels bit his tongue in outrage and for the longest moment said nothing. Finally he answered with a simple. "Okay, Roley, we'll coordinate this end. Thanks for the heads-up."

There was distinct click as agent Sandoval signed off. "What the hell?" Daniels swore under his breath. The VPOTUS. Tour of the area. That meant media coverage. Sound bites and photo ops. Then as quickly Rogers would be on his way back to Madrid and to Byrd's residence. Something was going on, but he had no idea what it was.

Again he looked for Bill Strait. If Vice President Rogers was spending the night at Evan Byrd's, they had to get an electronic eavesdrop on his phones.

"Hap," Bill Strait's voice came over his headset.

"Where are you?"

"In the cafeteria. Got time for a cup of good Spanish coffee?"

"Damn right I do," Hap clicked off and was starting to remove his headset when another voice came on.

"Agent Daniels?" The voice was male and had a British accent.

"Yes."

"This is Special Agent Harrison, MI5 in Manchester, England. We've just interviewed a Mr. Ian Graff, Nicholas Marten's employment supervisor in Manchester. He says Marten contacted him via his housekeeper earlier this morning and asked him to call his cell phone with a listing of types of azaleas."

"What do you mean 'via his housekeeper'?"

"He called his home and had the housekeeper call Mr. Graff at work. Though Graff seems to think Marten would have known he was at work all the while and called there directly."

"How in hell did Marten contact him? We would have picked up his cell phone location in seconds. What was it, a pay phone?"

"No, sir, he's getting sloppy. He used the mobile phone of a Barcelona limousine service, Limousines Barcelona. The car is currently out for day hire to two gentlemen. They were picked up at the Hotel Regente Majestic just before seven this morning."

"Do we know where the car is right now?"

"No, sir. But we have its description, license number, and mobile phone number."

"You didn't tell the limo company why you called?"

"No, sir. We were just gathering information. Done via a phone company billing and records check."

"Thank you, MI5. Good work. We appreciate it very much."

"Our pleasure, sir. Anything else, let us know."

Daniels took down the limousine's numbers, then clicked off. This was the break he'd been hoping for. The question was what to do about it. Give it to anyone else-his own people, the CIA, Spanish intel, or the Barcelona police-and Jake Lowe and Dr. Marshall would know about it in seconds. Give it to no one, and before long somebody at MI5 would be wondering why no action had been taken on their information and start making noise about it. What he had to do was think. Hard to do surrounded by a roomful of police and special agents working computers and dissecting information. He decided the best thing was to join Bill Strait in the cafeteria for a cup of good Spanish coffee.

80

• 10:55 A.M.

Miguel Balius's concentration was on the road in front of him. The small village they were passing through led to familiar hilly countryside beyond. Soon afterward they would begin the long winding climb into the mountains toward Montserrat.

"Miguel," Cousin Harold's voice came over the intercom. "Do you have a map of Barcelona and the surrounding area?"

"Yes, sir. It's in the seat pocket in front of you."

He glanced in the mirror to make sure Cousin Harold found it, then looked back to the road. Excluding accidents or more roadblocks, it should take them no more than forty minutes to reach the monastery, unless they changed their mind and wanted to go somewhere else, and that had been the reason for the map.

"Here, here, here, and here," Marten had the map spread out on the seat between them and was using a pen to draw vertical and then crossing horizontal lines on it, making a grid that went outward from Barcelona itself and into the countryside. It was the kind of framework he was certain the Secret Service and Spanish forces would be using to find them and close them off. By now the immense expansion and regrouping of the units that had concerned them earlier would be fully under way. The number of troops looking for them would be at least double the original force, if not more, and they all would be working the grid, scouring each area foot by foot, then securing it and moving on. This time there could be no backtracking as they had done in the city the night before and was the reason Marten had taken the chance and used the limo's mobile phone to call Ian Graff in Manchester.

Marten looked to the president. "By now the NSA will have traced the call Ian Graff made back to my cell phone and some agency, the police or British intelligence, will have tracked him down in Manchester, listened to his story, then traced the call I made to his home to the mobile phone here in the car. My hope then was that we would already have been at the monastery and Miguel would have been long on his way. When the authorities caught up with him all he'd have had to say was that we asked him to drop us off at some village or other along the way and he had. He could name any of the half-dozen we passed through. No one would ever know he wasn't telling the truth. After all he said 'discreet' was the company policy."

"Well, so far, nothing's happened. So maybe your Mr. Graff was harder to find than you think," the president said. "Maybe luck is finally on our side."

"We're not at the monastery yet, either. If they call Miguel, they'll probably use his cell. We wouldn't know who placed the call-it could be his wife-until we were surrounded and it was too late."

"So far he hasn't picked up his phone," the president said.

"Maybe they don't want to tell him. Just broadcast the license number and description of the car. It might take a little longer but they'd still get us."

"What are you suggesting?"

"We either have him drop us off and soon, then try to get to Montserrat on our own or-"

"Or what?"

"Tell Miguel some of what's happening and ask for his help. Both are dangerous. The only thing we have going for us is Miguel himself and the company policy. It's the old joke; our chances of getting out of this are between slim and none and slim just left town."

President Harris glanced out at the rugged countryside, then pressed the intercom. "Miguel," he said evenly.

"Yes, sir."

"How much longer before we get to the monastery?"

"Without roadblocks or other problems, a half hour or so."

"How far by miles?"

"The route we're going twenty or so, sir. Mostly uphill."

"Thank you."

The president clicked off the intercom and took a breath, then looked to Marten. He was as drawn and grave and intense as Marten had ever seen him. "Miguel seems decent and honest. He knows the land, the roads, and the people. He knows intricacies of the language I do not. Under the circumstances he seems far more an asset than a liability."

81

• BARCELONA, 11:05 A.M.

Armed with the MI5 information about Marten's limousine number and a fake business card he kept for a variety of "necessary circumstances," Hap Daniels stepped from a taxi, paid the driver and waited until the cab pulled away. Then he turned and started toward the garagelike structure that housed Limousines Barcelona.

Minutes earlier he'd been in the cafeteria at Barcelona Police Headquarters where Bill Strait had confirmed he'd talked to Emilio Vasquez at Spanish intel in Madrid and asked him in Hap's name to very quietly put electronic surveillance on all of Evan Byrd's telephone communications.

"It has to do with the effort at hand," Vasquez had said without emotion, a statement more than a question.

"Yes."

"Considering the situation, if Tigre Uno asks, then it will be done."

"N-O," Strait said.

"N-O, of course." N-O. Not Officially. There would be no official tapping of Evan Byrd's phones. It was to be done covertly with anyone involved fully aware and prepared to deny it had ever been done.

Immediately afterward Hap finished his coffee and left, telling Strait he needed a walk to think things over. If they needed him they had his BlackBerry, his emergency pager, everything. He walked for three deliberate blocks before turning a corner and hailing a taxi. Asking the driver to take him to a cross street address that was within short walking distance of Limousines Barcelona, he suddenly began to understand what POTUS, or "Crop Duster," must be feeling and had felt when he'd crawled through the air ducts at the Hotel Ritz; that he had no idea who he could trust. And for Hap that meant Bill Strait, even the entire Secret Service detail. Maybe they were wholly innocent but there was no way for him to be absolutely certain.

What he did know was that he didn't trust Chief of Staff Tom Curran; didn't trust Crop Duster's chief political adviser Jake Lowe; didn't trust National Security Adviser Dr. James Marshall; and he didn't like the overtly opportunistic feel of the vice president suddenly flying into Barcelona for a twenty-minute photo and sound bite op and then retreating to Madrid and Evan Byrd's home. It immediately put VPOTUS alongside the others on his "do not trust" list.

Now, thinking about it, he remembered who else was at the late-night meeting at Byrd's residence: Secretary of State David Chaplin, Secretary of Defense Terrence Langdon, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, United States Air Force General Chester Keaton.

"Christ," he said under his breath. What if they were all in this together?

But in what? And what had they asked or demanded of the president that had put him so into a corner that he had no other choice but to run?

• 11:10 A.M.

Romeo J. Brown

Private Investigator

Long Island City, NY

Limousines Barcelona's day manager, smartly dressed, forty-year-old Beto Nahmans, turned the business card over in his hand then looked to Hap Daniels sitting in one of two stylish chrome and black leather chairs across from his desk.

"I understand you have the mobile number and license plate number of one of our cars," Nahmans said in crisp English.

Daniels nodded. "I've been retained by a security firm investigating insurance fraud. We believe one of the people we are following is a passenger in that limousine. It's my job to find him and give him the chance to voluntarily return to the U.S. for prosecution before we ask that he be taken into custody."

"And what might this person's name be?"

"Marten. Nicholas Marten. Marten with an e."

Nahmans swiveled in his chair, punched a series of numbers into a keyboard, and then looked at the computer screen in front of him.

"I'm sorry, sir. We have no record of a Nicholas Marten as a passenger in the vehicle you are referring to. Or any other for that matter."

"No?"

"No, sir."

Daniels's manner hardened. "That's not an answer I like."

"It's what we have," Nahmans smiled faintly. "I'm afraid it's all I can tell you."

Hap Daniels sighed and looked at the floor, then tugged at an ear and looked back. "What if I were to have Spanish intelligence ask for that information?"

"The answer would be the same. I apologize."

"Suppose they presented an official document requiring you to submit a list of each and all of your clients for the past two years. Their names. Where they were picked up, who was with them, how long they were gone, and what address they were returned to."

"I don't think that would be legal." Uncertainty flashed through Beto Nahmans's eyes and Daniels took full advantage of it.

"Would you like to find out?"

Three minutes later Daniels walked out of Limousines Barcelona. Day manager Nahmans had given him three names. A Cousin Jack. A Cousin Harold. And Demi Pi-card, a woman who had ordered the limousine a little before seven that morning, charging it to her room at the Hotel Regente Majestic.

82

• 11:15 A.M.

Miguel Balius stood wide-eyed and in shadow next to a broken-down table in the corner of what had once been some kind of stone millhouse. Above him most of the roof was open to the sky, while outside, a roaring stream passed just feet from what at one time must have been a supporting wall.

"It's alright, Miguel. Take a deep breath. Relax. No bad men here." Cousin Jack leaned against the far corner of the same table talking easily. He no longer wore the glasses he had sported from the beginning when Miguel first picked them up at the Hotel Regente Majestic. He also had a full head of hair, or rather a perfectly fitting hairpiece Miguel had not seen before. That was until "Cousin Jack" had stepped from the rear seat of the limousine moments earlier suddenly transformed into the man the entire world recognized as the president of the United States.

"Discreet, Miguel, discreet," Cousin Harold, Nicholas Marten, urged gently from behind.

"Discreet, yes, sir," Miguel breathed, his entire being glued to the man in front of him. At the cousins' request he had driven off the main road and taken a dirt road through the woods to the edge of a stream and the remains of this stone building where he'd parked the Mercedes. The cousins, it seemed, had wanted to wade in a "Spanish stream" as they'd earlier waded in the Mediterranean. At the time the request seemed no more odd than any of their other behavior. Then Cousin Jack had emerged from the car, his hairpiece on and without his glasses, and said:

"Miguel, my name is John Henry Harris, and I am the president of the United States. This is Nicholas Marten. We need your help."

Miguel Balius said simply, humbly, and instantaneously, "What can I do for you, sir?"

• BARCELONA, HOTEL REGENTE MAJESTIC. 11:20 A.M.

Romeo J. Brown

Private Investigator

Long Island City, NY

The concierge studied Hap Daniels's business card. "Insurance fraud?"

"In the U.S., yes, sir."

The concierge pressed his fingertips together, "Ms. Picard is a guest here. She ordered the limousine this morning for people she said were her cousins. They had just flown in from New York, were jet-lagged and could not sleep, and wanted to see the sights of Barcelona."

"One man was older and nearly bald. The other tall and in his early thirties."

"Yes."

"Where is Ms. Picard now?"

"I believe she left the hotel some time ago," the concierge shifted positions behind the front desk.

"Do you know where she went?"

"I have told you all I know, señor."

Daniels stared at him; it was the same "privacy of clients" treatment he'd received at the limousine company. Only here he could hardly threaten a visit by Spanish intelligence. The hotel, he guessed, probably had three hundred rooms. The argument over a threat to have Spanish intelligence, or tax or local civil authorities demand an accounting of who had stayed there and why over even a short period would, at the very best, be time consuming, and time was something he had precious little of.

"Muchas gracias," he said finally, and started for the door, then turned back, "I wonder if you could tell me the time?"

The man looked at him.

"The time of day?" Daniels tapped his watch. "It stopped." Hap leaned in earnestly, resting his hand on the counter in front of him, the corner of a hundred-euro bill sticking out from under it.

"This Ms. Picard," Hap said quietly. "What does she look like?"

The concierge smiled and looked at his own watch, then leaned in and lowered his voice. "Very attractive. French, a professional photographer. Short dark hair. Navy blazer, tan slacks. Cameras over one shoulder and small equipment bag over the other. She left with a middle-aged African-American male and an older European woman in a white van with the lettering of the monastery at Montserrat."

"I'm sorry, I didn't get the time," Hap said loudly enough to be heard by people passing by.

"Eleven twenty-three, señor," the concierge matched his own watch to Hap's and at the same time palmed the hundred-euro bill.

"Eleven twenty-three," Hap smiled. "Gracias."

"Eleven twenty-four now, señor."

"Gracias," Hap said again. "Muchas gracias."

"Photographer? Montserrat?" Hap said to himself as he came through the Regente Majestic's front door. A half-beat later his cell phone rang. He picked it from his belt and clicked on. "Daniels."

"Where the damn hell are you?" It was Jake Lowe and he left no chance for reply. "We need you at the hotel right away!"

"What is it?"

"Now, Hap! Right now!"

83

• THE HOTEL GRAND PALACE, 11:45 A.M.

Jake Lowe, National Security Adviser Marshall, and Hap Daniels stood alone in the special communications room of the four-room suite Lowe and Marshall had taken as their Barcelona crisis headquarters. The door was closed and they were gathered in front of a video monitor waiting for a secure feed to come through from the White House communications center in Washington.

"Go ahead," Lowe said into a headset connected to a secure phone on the table beside him. There was a short pause; then static showed up on the screen followed immediately by the beginning of a thirty-second video clip. A clip that upon their approval would be sent to Fox News for immediate distribution to major television and cable networks worldwide. The video was complete with a time and date stamp that began at 2:23 P.M. yesterday, Friday, April 7. It showed President Harris, alive and well at the "undisclosed location" he had been taken to following the terrorist threat in Madrid. He was seen in a rustic conference room with National Security Adviser Marshall, Secretary of Defense Terrence Langdon and Secretary of State David Chaplin. They were all in shirtsleeves, notepads and bottled water in front of them, diligently going over what was reported to be notes and text for the speech the president would give to NATO leaders Monday in Warsaw.

It wasn't old recycled video from another place and time; it was all new, and in a setting Hap had never seen before.

"How the hell did you do that?" he said as the screen went blank at the finish and he looked at Marshall. "You're here. Langdon's in Brussels, Chaplin's in London," his eyes went to Lowe, "and Crop Duster's someplace… else."

"I asked for your opinion," Lowe said coldly. "Is the video credible from a Secret Service point of view? From the point of view of any global security professional who might see it?"

"Somebody breaks it down technically, I don't know. But from where I stand, yeah, it works," Hap said evenly. "There's just enough, and so far no one should have a reason to scrutinize it closer or believe it's anything but what it's supposed to be."

"So far?" Marshall said quietly. "What do you mean by 'so far'?"

"If POTUS suddenly shows up somewhere on his own, then what? How do we explain that?"

Lowe stared at him in icy silence, and Daniels could feel his rage, his pent-up anger at the whole thing. Abruptly Lowe turned away and spoke into his headset. "Release the video," he said, "release it now."

84

• 11:55 A.M.

Demi put out a hand to steady herself as the white Monasterio Benedictino Montserrat van made a sharp turn up the long, winding mountain road leading to the monastery. High above her and in the distance she could see the structure itself. It looked like a medieval fortress in miniature, a tiny city built into the cliffs.

Now she shifted her gaze and looked back inside the van. Raphael, the driver, was intent on the road and a large tour bus directly in front of them. Behind him, Beck and Luciana were silent, intent on something they were reading.

Demi looked at Luciana more closely. She was dressed in black and had a large black purse on the seat beside her. It was essentially the same thing she'd worn yesterday when Demi first met her. It made her wonder if it was a uniform of sorts, a classic costume for a classic witch, if there was such a thing.

Demi had told Marten and the president she had no idea who Luciana was. It was a lie. Luciana had been the center of her attention for years and was the wellspring of everything. For the last two decades she had been the sacerdotessa, the high priestess of the secret Aldebaran boschetto, the coven. As such she had mastered the intricate skills of her craft, most specifically those of ritual and psychic influence, and it meant she had authority over all of the coven's followers and that included Reverend Beck and Merriman Foxx.

A widow with piercing green eyes and striking black hair and still remarkably handsome at sixty-six, Luciana owned Pensione Madonnella, a small hotel on the Italian island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples where she had been born. Further research-in the form of a hired private investigator-had established that she left the island two or three times a year for ten days or so at a time to visit small towns and villages in north and central Italy where she would meet with others of the coven, men and women alike, who carried the tattoo of Aldebaran on their left thumb. Immediately afterward she returned to Ischia to oversee her business.

Then, and always at this same time of year, she came to the monastery at Montserrat, where she would check into the Hotel Abat Cisneros and spend the greater part of a week. What she did there or even if it involved the boschetto, Demi had not been able to discover. But whatever it was, it apparently involved Reverend Beck and probably had for some time, because for the last dozen years he had taken his vacation and gone to Europe during the same period. Yet it had not been until yesterday when Demi came to Beck's suite at the Regente Majestic and found the sacerdotessa seated on a couch and having coffee with him that she put Beck's excursions to Europe together with Luciana's sojourns to Montserrat. In retrospect it was a moment of revelation she might well have been prepared for, but she wasn't and finding Luciana there, introduced by Beck as his "good friend," nearly took her breath away.

• 12:00 NOON

A sharp jolt as the van bounced over a hole in the road brought Demi back from her muse. To one side steep sandstone cliffs rose straight up almost within arm's reach. On the other, across the Llobregat River and the valley below, lesser hills faded into the distance. Again she looked at the driver and then to Beck and Luciana, still silent, still intent on their reading.

Patience, she told herself, patience and calm. You are almost there. After all these years, after everything. Soon we will be at the monastery. After that-pray it all works-we will meet Dr. Foxx and then be taken to wherever the ritual takes place. There, finally, to witness the rites of the coven.

Suddenly time compressed and with it came a kaleidoscope of memories. Like her supposed innocence concerning Luciana. The story she had told Marten of the search for her missing sister had been a lie. There was no sister. She was searching for her mother. And she had been missing not for two years but eighteen, vanished when Demi was eight. Nor had she gone missing from Malta but from Paris, where her parents had moved from their native Italy soon after they were married, her father changing their name from the Italian Piacenti to the French Picard.

Her mother had been fifteen when Demi was born and twenty-three when she disappeared while on her way to a neighborhood market she had visited countless times. A police investigation turned up but one single fact: her mother had never reached the market. A check of hospitals and the city morgue turned up nothing. A week passed. And then two, and then three, with no sign of her whatsoever. People wandered off all the time, the police said, and for a myriad of reasons. Sometimes they came back; more often they didn't. Not because anything had happened to them but because they didn't want to. And that was how it was left. An open police report and her and her father, nothing else.

A second blow came barely four months later when her father was killed in an industrial accident at the automobile factory where he worked. Suddenly an orphan, and following a provision in her father's will, Demi was sent to live with a distant aunt who taught French and Italian at an exclusive boarding school outside of London. There the two shared a small apartment on campus, and because her aunt was on the faculty, she was enrolled in the school. Her aunt, it turned out, was distant in more ways than one, which made the chief benefits of her new life a good education and that she would learn English. The rest of growing up was left solely to her.

She'd been living with her aunt for several months when a trunk arrived from Paris. In it were some of her mother's personal things: clothes; a photograph taken only days before she disappeared, her brown eyes intense, yet calm and very peaceful; some books-mostly in Italian; and a number of abstract sketches her mother had drawn as a hobby. Aside from her mother's photograph and a few of her clothes, the rest was of very little interest to a girl approaching her ninth birthday; a girl still heartbroken and confused, feeling abandoned and terribly alone; a girl too, who was convinced her mother was still alive and who watched the mail every day hoping for the letter from her that never came; a girl who carried her mother's picture everywhere and who searched the face of every female stranger she saw-hoping, praying, certain, that one day she would see that familiar face, one that would suddenly smile in recognition and throw her arms around her, promising never to let her go again.

The passage of time did little to ease Demi's pain or sense of loss. And although her aunt strongly tried to dissuade her, the idea that her mother was alive grew stronger with every beat of her heart. But as the days and years passed and nothing came of it, all she could do was immerse herself in her schoolwork and watch in abject loneliness as she saw her classmates' mothers and fathers come to pick them up to take them home. For weekends, holidays, vacation trips, and summer breaks.

Then, on the morning of her seventeenth birthday, a letter arrived from an attorney in Paris. Inside was a small envelope and with it a brief note telling her that by codicil to his last will and testament it was her late father's wish that "this be held to be delivered to you on the occasion of your seventeenth birthday."

Puzzled, she opened the envelope to find a note written in her father's hand and dated shortly before his death.

My darling Demi-

I am writing this and then putting it away for you to read later when you might better understand. I know you loved your mother terribly and must miss her enormously still. It would be unnatural for you not to wonder what happened to her, most probably for years to come, if not for the rest of your life. But for your sake and the sake of your children and theirs, accept it that your mother loved you as much as any mother can love her child and leave it at that. Do not, I underscore, do not, under any circumstances, attempt to learn her fate. Some things are far too dangerous to know, let alone try to understand. Please take this warning deeply toheart as an everlasting plea for your own safety and welfare.

I love you so much and always will,

Dad

The note stunned her. Immediately she called the lawyer in Paris who had sent the letter, wanting to know more. That was all there was, he told her, adding that he had no idea what the note contained, only that the firm was simply executing a provision in her father's will. Afterward she'd hung up and gone scurrying to the only place she thought she might find more, the trunk. But there had been nothing other than what she'd seen a hundred times: the clothes, books in Italian, and her mother's artistic drawings. This time-and maybe because she had found nothing else and because they were in her mother's hand and therefore very personal-she concentrated on the drawings. There were thirty-four in all and in a variety of sizes, some of which were small, the size of greeting cards. It was one of these that caught her attention; a simple sketch of a balled cross. In the lower right hand corner beneath it, written in small letters and in her mother's hand, was one word-Boschetto.

The sketch and the word beneath it combined with what her father had written, sent a gnawing chill through her. Immediately she went to her purse and took out her mother's photograph. For the thousandth time Demi studied her face. This time her eyes seemed far more intense, as if she were deliberately staring right at her. Again Demi read her father's note. Again she looked at the drawing. Again she stared at the word. Once more the chill came.

The photograph, the note, the sketch, the word.

It was then she realized that a huge part of herself was missing and had been for all these years. It was a deep, almost overwhelming sense that she would never be whole until she learned if her mother was alive or dead, and the truth of what had really happened. In that moment too she wondered if somehow all of this, coming now when she was nearly of age, had been sent to her by her mother as a way of trying to communicate with her, to give her clues to her fate.

The moment was a turning point in her life, one in which she swore to her mother that she would do whatever it took and for however long it took-and at whatever cost-to find out what had happened. It was a pact that was intensely personal and for the two of them only. One she vowed never to share with another human being. And to this moment never had.

"You have been very quiet, Demi. Is anything wrong?"

The immediacy of Reverend Beck's voice startled her, and she looked up to see him looking at her over the seat-back. Now Luciana turned to look at her too, her green eyes suddenly stark and penetrating.

"I'm quite well, thank you," Demi smiled.

"Good," Luciana said without expression, "we still have far to go."

85

• 12:10 P.M.

Miguel Balius parked the limousine behind a row of trees between the tiny Montserrat-Aeri railway stop and the small cable car terminal where the green-and-yellow gondolas began the trip that took them straight up over rocky cliffs to an upper terminal nearly two thousand feet above. Then, at Marten's request, he locked his traveling bag with its electronic notebook, tape recorder, and personal effects in the trunk, and walked his newfound "cousins"-President Harris once again without his toupee and wearing glasses and the big floppy hat he had borrowed from Demi the night before-to the path leading to the lower terminal. There, in the shadow of a large tree, he stopped and watched them go down, walking separately toward the terminal as if they were strangers and had just come from the railway station.

Marten bought his ticket first, round trip from the lower terminal to the top and then back down again. A moment later the president did the same and then followed Marten out to the platform to wait with a handful of tourists for the car above to come down. It arrived in minutes. Its doors opened and a dozen passengers got out. Then those waiting entered, a uniformed worker closed the door, and the green-and-yellow car began its ascent. The entire time there had not been so much as a glance or a word between them. It hadn't been necessary. They already knew what was next. It had been worked through at the crumbling stone building by the stream in the minutes after Miguel had most willingly, respectfully, and enthusiastically "been brought into the family."

"The restaurant is called Abat Cisneros and is part of the Hotel Abat Cisneros. The service door to outside is down a corridor and directly past the restrooms. Once through it there is a pathway directly outside," Miguel said definitively, then picked up a sharp piece of rock to draw a rough diagram of the monastery complex on the old building's dirt floor, carefully scratching in the details of what he was talking about.

"This way leads down to the area where they bring in the supplies; the other way goes up and around a sharp turn hidden by trees. About thirty yards farther are the ruins of the chapel I was telling you about," He drew an X on the floor to mark the ruins. "It's overgrown and hard to see even from the path. But it's there and if you can get Foxx to it, it will serve your purposes quite well."

"Good," Marten said, then looked to the president. "Assuming Demi was telling the truth, she, Beck, and Luciana should be at the monastery with Foxx when we get there. We can expect their first step will be to try and find me and deliver me to Foxx. That is unless Demi's told them about you. If she did, they'll be looking for you as well, and that changes things altogether."

"It doesn't change anything." President Harris was resolute. "If Foxx is there we have to find out what he knows. If he's alerted my 'friends,' we'll deal with that when it happens. There is no other choice."

"Alright," Marten accepted the president's tenacity, "but at least we can make it a little more difficult for them. We go to the cable car terminal separately. Buy our tickets singly. Tourists who don't know each other. From what Miguel says the gondola is small, people are crowded together. If for some reason you're recognized and a fuss is made I'm still free to get to Foxx on my own, while you're left to your-" Marten let go a half-grin-" 'political wiles' to get out of it. If nothing happens and we reach the upper terminal, we still go off individually." Immediately he looked to Miguel, "Once I get to the monastery, where would the most logical place be for someone to find me?"

"The plaza in front of the basilica."

"Okay," Marten turned back to the president. "Most likely it's Beck who will do it. If Demi did tell them about you and he's looking for both of us he'll be disappointed and wonder if she told him the truth or if you simply chose not to come. In either case he will be confronting me alone.

"He might mention Demi, he might not, but he'll break the ice with small talk, then bring up Foxx, say that he's there and suggest the two of us meet to talk over the discord still lingering from what happened in Malta. Just what that will entail and where we don't know, but the certainty is they'll be trying to run the show, which is something we don't want. My response should be that if the good doctor wants to talk to me it should be in a public place. I'll suggest the restaurant. For lunch, a drink, whatever. In the meantime-"

"I will have gone directly there, made certain where the men's restroom is and the exit door to the outside beyond it that Miguel described." Now it was the president's turn to smile. They had been together for less than a day and already they were finishing each other's thoughts and sentences. "With luck I will have found the pathway and the ruined chapel, then come back and taken a table near the door and, head down, a beverage in hand, be reading a newspaper or tour guide when you and Dr. Foxx enter."

"You will also have purchased the appropriate items from the menu."

"Of course."

"You're a good student, Cousin," Marten said, then looked to Miguel. "Once we're done with Foxx we're going to have to get out and fast, before he's found. The cable car is too slow and confining, and besides, we might have to wait for it. What we need is for you to be waiting at the monastery to drive us out. The trouble is the limo. At some point, if they haven't already, the police will have its description. Right now it's pretty well hidden, but bringing it out in the open and up the long road to the monastery is too risky."

"I will get us another vehicle, Cousin Harold."

"How?"

Miguel smiled, "As I said, I have been to the monastery many times. I have friends who work there, I also have relatives who live nearby. Whatever it is, I will have something waiting." Again he picked up the rock and squatted down next to his sketch of the monastery's layout. "This is where you will come out," he said, scratching a large X into the dirt, "this is where I will be," he scratched a second X, then looked up. "Any questions?"

"No. Thank you, cousin," the president said genuinely.

"You're welcome, sir," he said. At that moment a great and magnificent grin burst across Miguel's face like a dazzling ray of sunshine. In that moment he knew he had just become a liftetime member of their exclusive and very tiny, "cousins' club."

Marten glanced across the gondola as it climbed rapidly toward the upper terminal. Demi's floppy hat tilted to one side, President Harris stood alone on the far side of the car, gazing out the window. A somewhat eccentric everyday tourist riding up with a half dozen other everyday tourists, most all of whom had their faces pressed to the glass as he did, watching the terminal below quickly become little more than a dot in the distance.

86

• 12:20 P.M.

Demi felt the rise of her pulse as the Monasterio Benedictino Montserrat van reached the top of the long mountain road and made a sharp turn into the monastery's restricted parking area. Through the windows she could now see up close the grouping of sand-colored stone buildings she had glimpsed from far below. No longer in miniature, it still looked like an isolated fortress-city, untouchable against the half-mile-high limestone cliffs and encompassing among other things its famed basilica, a museum, restaurant, hotel, and private apartments.

Abruptly the van's passenger door slid open. A young priest stood outside in the bright sun.

"Welcome to Montserrat," he said in English.

Moments later he was leading them across a plaza filled with tourists and then up a series of steps toward the basilica. Beck carried a small overnight bag; the witch, Luciana, her large black purse; Demi, a small equipment bag with photographic supplies and a smaller bag inside it holding personal toiletries, and two professional cameras thrown over one shoulder; one, a 35mm Nikon, the other, a Canon digital.

The priest led them under a stone arch and into the basilica's inner courtyard, which was packed with more tourists. A clock high on the basilica's tower read 12:25. They were precisely on time. Immediately Demi thought of Cousin Jack and Cousin Harold. She wondered where they were-if they were still with the limousine driver and on their way here, or-she felt her stomach clench in a knot. What if they'd been stopped at one of the roadblocks? What then? What would she do? What would Beck?

"This way, please," the priest led them down a long porticoed corridor and past a series of arched stone panels inset with heraldic symbols and what appeared to be religious inscriptions written in Latin. Then she saw it, and her heart caught in her throat. Encased in one of the last panels was the stone sculpture of an early Christian Crusader. Chain mail covering his head and neck, he rested an arm on a triangular shield. Carved into the shield was the balled cross of the Aldebaran. This was the first time she had seen it anywhere outside of books or drawings or the tattoos on the left thumbs of members of the coven. She wondered how long the piece had been there and who else over the years or even centuries had seen it and recognized the sign and knew its meaning.

"Through here," the priest turned them down another corridor, this one narrower than the first and lined with row after row of flickering votive candles. Where before there had been numbers of tourists, now there were few. With every step they were getting farther and farther from the center of activity.

Demi heard her cameras click together as they touched. At the same time she felt an icy chill touch the nape of her neck and then creep across her shoulders. With it came the sound of her father's voice whispering the warning he had written to her about her mother so many years earlier-Do not, under any circumstances try to learn her fate.

Fearfully she looked back. Except for the rows of flickering candles the walkway behind them was empty.

Five more steps and the priest stopped at a heavy wooden door cut into a stone archway. Immediately he turned to a wooden panel set into the stonework next to the door and slid it back. Inside was an electronic keypad. He punched in four numbers, pressed the pound key, then slid the panel closed and turned an iron knob on the door. It opened easily, and he gestured for them to enter. They did and he left, closing the door behind him.

Compared to the noonday brightness outside, the place seemed inordinately dark. Slowly their eyes became accustomed to it. They were in an office of some kind with a number of ornate high-backed wooden chairs lining one wall and a massive bookcase against the wall opposite. An enormous wooden desk and large leather chair behind it sat near a closed door at the far end. The ceiling was high and arched, while the walls themselves appeared to be of the same aged stone as the monastery's complex of buildings. The floor was the same, worn shiny in places by the foot traffic of people and time.

"Wait here please, Demi," Beck said quietly, and then led Luciana toward the door at the end of the room. Reaching it, he knocked, and then they entered and Beck closed the door behind them.

87

• 12:35 P.M.

Demi waited alone in the dim light and silence; the door they had entered through closed behind her; the one at the far end where Reverend Beck and Luciana had gone out, shut too. Whether they had left to find Dr. Foxx or to do something else entirely she didn't know.

Once more she looked around the darkened chamber. The high-arched ceiling, the high wooden chairs against either wall, the great wooden desk at the end, the stone walls, the worn stone floor. There was history here. Much of it old. All of it Christian. She wondered if her mother had come here so many years earlier. Wondered if she had once stood where Demi did now. In this room, in this dim light.

Waiting.

For what?

For whom?

• 12:40 P.M.

Again she heard her father's warning. With it came something else, the memory of a person she had long tried to keep from thinking about: a bald, armless octogenarian scholar she had met six years earlier at the beginning of her professional career when she worked for the Associated Press in Rome.

A photo assignment had taken her north into Umbria and Tuscany. A free day in Florence had given her the opportunity to explore used-book stores-the same as she did everywhere she traveled in Italy-searching for material on Italian witchcraft and looking for anything that might reveal a boschetto or coven, past or present, that took as its marker the sign of Aldebaran. It was a search that until that day had turned up nothing. Then, in a tiny bookshop near the Ponte Vecchio, she came upon a slim, tattered fifty-year-old book on Florentine witchcraft. Skimming it, she stopped abruptly at its fourth chapter. Its yellowed title page all but took her breath away. The chapter's title was "Aradia" and beneath the printed word was an unmistakable illustration-the balled cross of Aldebaran. Heart pounding, she bought the book immediately and took it back to her hotel room. The chapter, like the book itself, was slight, but in reading it she learned of an ancient and secretive boschetto of Italian female witches, the strega she had told Nicholas Marten about. Called Aradia after a fourteenth-century wise woman who brought back La Vecchia Religione, the Old Religion, the boschetto revived a number of ancient traditions-an unwritten body of laws, rites and doctrines-and put them into practice in northern and central Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. There the chapter ended. The significance of the sign of Aldebaran was never mentioned, nor was word Aradia used again anywhere in the book.

Desperate to know more, Demi went to bookstores and museums and visited occult societies and scholars in the Tuscan cities of Siena and Arezzo. From there she went to Bologna and then Milan and finally back to Rome. In all she found nothing more than a brief note that in 1866 an American writer and historian traveling in Italy had learned that a manuscript containing the name Aradia and describing "the ancient secrets of Italian witchcraft" existed somewhere in Tuscany. He searched for months trying to find it but without success. He did, however, come upon an Italian witch named Raffaella who allegedly had seen it and told him of its contents. His conclusion was that the secrets of Aradia, or at least Raffaella's interpretation of it, were little more than a mixture of sorcery, medieval heresy, and political radicalism. His analysis ended there, with no mention whatsoever of the sign of Aldebaran.

After that Demi found nothing. Even among the most committed academics further knowledge of the Aradia coven that used the sign of Aldebaran seemed nonexistent. Internet searches turned up nothing. Museum queries and phone interviews with practicing witches and witchcraft historians around the world ended the same way.

Then, nearly a year later, and now working for Agence France-Presse, she learned of a reclusive scholar named Giacomo Gela. A bald, emaciated octogenarian and former soldier who had lost both arms in the Second World War, Gela lived in a tiny room in a small village near Pisa and had made the study of Italian witchcraft his life's work. Contacting him, she heard the pause in his voice when she mentioned Aradia. When she asked if she might visit and told him of the reason behind her request, he agreed to see her immediately.

In Gela she found a man of immense intellect who not only knew about the enigmatic Aradia but about a more secretive order hidden within it. Called Aradia Minor, it was referred to in writing simply as the letter A followed by the letter M but written in a combination of Hebrew and Greek alphabets as " μ" which made it look more like a vague and innocuous symbol that would be of little more than passing interest to almost anyone. Even to Gela, the true origin of Aradia Minor remained a mystery. What he did know was that for most of the latter half of the sixteenth century it had been centered on the Italian island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples, the birthplace and home, Demi would later discover, of Luciana. In the early seventeenth century, and probably in the interests of security, Aradia Minor was decentralized and moved back to the mainland, its boschetti scattered clandestinely throughout countryside, largely in the region between Rome and Florence.

Aradia Minor's caution was not without reason, for among its traditions were annual rites that celebrated ancient and often brutal pagan ceremonies that involved blood oaths, sacrifices of living creatures, and human torture, and were performed before several hundred members of a powerful order called the Unknowns. What the purpose of these ceremonies was or who this group of unknowns was remained a mystery. What was acknowledged was that the celebration of these rites began in the late 1530s; that they were held at various temples secreted throughout Europe; and that they were performed annually and for years at a time throughout the centuries, only to go suddenly and inexplicably dormant, sometimes for decades or more, before beginning once again.

Chillingly, Giacomo Gela believed this was one of Aradia Minor's active periods; its identifying marker, the sign of Aldebaran; its singular traditions still practiced. Where it was centered, or why it existed, or for what reason, remained as unclear now as it had in the past, yet he was certain there had to be a strong rationale behind it, one that was highly focused and required not just great secrecy but considerable funding because too many people were involved and the pageant was too regular, too guarded, and too extreme for the expense not be substantial.

It was then Gela's eyes had narrowed and his voice had become shrill with warning: "Do not take anything you have learned here further than the walls of this room."

The expense was not Aradia Minor's alone, he told her; history was littered with the corpses of those who had tried to know more. To make certain she fully understood, he bared a secret few people still living knew-that while it was true he had lost his arms in the Second World War, the butchering had not come in battle; instead it had happened when he had inadvertently come upon one of Aradia Minor's ceremonies in an alpine forest deep in the Italian Dolomites where he was on patrol. That he was alive today was only because those who cut off his arms purposely failed to finish him off.

"To kill me would have been easy. Instead they bound my wounds and carried me from the woods and left me by the roadside. The reason, I now know, was to leave behind a hideous living reminder, a warning for anyone else who might try to find out what happened and attempt to uncover the secrets of Aradia Minor."

Abruptly his eyes had locked on hers and his voice had suddenly raged with fury: "How many hours of how many days of how many years have I sworn at God, damning him, wishing they had finished me. The life I have lived like this, and for as long as I have, has been far crueler than death could ever be."

The way Gela spoke, the sound of his voice, the rage in his eyes, the way he sat there armless and cross-legged in his tiny room, was horrifying. In combination with her father's letter it might well have been enough then for her to abandon her journey altogether. But she hadn't; instead she had deliberately pushed it to the back of her memory, locked it away, and kept it there.

Until now. Waiting here, alone, in this room, in this corner of the monastery, he suddenly broke free of her memory. She saw his face in front of her. Again heard his sharp warning. Do not take anything you have learned here further than the walls of this room.

A sound near the back of the room made the vision fade and Demi looked up. The door had just been opened and Reverend Beck and Luciana were coming toward her. A third person she couldn't see clearly was with them. Then as they neared, she did.

"Welcome, Demi, I'm pleased you could join us," he said warmly. His face, his shock of white hair, his hands with their extraordinarily long fingers, unmistakable.

Merriman Foxx.

88

• 12:44 P.M.

The green-and-yellow cable car reached the upper terminal and stopped. A moment later an attendant opened the doors and the passengers began to file out. Marten glanced at the president, then followed an Italian couple out of the car and up the walkway toward the monastery.

Forty seconds later he reached the top of the walkway and stopped. The monastery complex was directly across from him. The buildings he could see all seemed to be constructed of the same beige-colored sand or limestone. The edifice closest to him and on the far side of a paved roadway was seven stories high. One nearby was eight. Another near it was ten and had a huge kind of bell-tower on top. And these were only a part of the whole. The main attraction, the basilica, was across a wide plaza and up a broad stone staircase, both of which were filled with tourists.

• 12:50 P.M.

Marten walked leisurely across the plaza, making it relatively easy for Beck to find him. As he went, a man passed him from behind and kept on walking. President Harris.

• 12:52 P.M.

Marten kept walking. Ahead of him he saw the president veer left, pass a tour group, then disappear beyond them, following Miguel's directions, going toward the Hotel Abat Cisneros and the restaurant that was part of it.

Marten slowed his pace and looked around, playing the first-time visitor trying to get his bearings and decide where to go next. He wondered whether Demi had lied to them. That neither she nor Beck nor Luciana nor Merriman Foxx, for that matter, was anywhere near here. That she had sent them miles out of the way while she and the others met Foxx somewhere else entirely, maybe even in Barcelona itself.

"Mr. Marten," the deep, velvety voice of Reverend Rufus Beck suddenly called out. Marten looked up to see the congressional chaplain alone, walking toward him across the plaza from the direction of the basilica.

"Mr. Marten," Beck said again as he reached him. "How nice to see you. Ms. Picard told me you might be coming."

"She did?" Marten tried to sound surprised.

"Yes," Beck smiled warmly. "I was just coming from services; perhaps you would care to join us for a cup of coffee."

"By 'us' you mean you and Ms. Picard."

"There will be two others, Mr. Marten. A good friend of mine from Italy, a woman named Luciana, and a friend of yours, Dr. Foxx."

"Foxx?"

Again Beck smiled. "He asked me to find you. He wanted to resolve any 'misgivings' you might have had following your conversation in Malta. The restaurant in the hotel here has a small, private room where you and he can speak openly."

"Restaurant?"

"Yes, unless you'd prefer to meet somewhere else."

Marten grinned at the irony. Here they were trying to get Foxx to the restaurant, and now he was inviting him to the same place. The private room might be a problem, but with Beck and Demi and Luciana right there it would be all the easier to tell Foxx he preferred to talk to him alone and suggest they take a walk outside.

"The restaurant's fine, reverend," he said graciously. "I'd be more than happy to hear what Dr. Foxx has to say about my 'misgivings.' "

89

• 1:00 P.M

"Welcome to Montserrat, Mr. Marten," Merriman Foxx stood as they came in. Demi and the witch, Luciana, sat opposite Foxx at a round linen-covered table, coffee steaming from cups before them, a small plate of shortbread cookies or polvorones in the center of the table. There was a chair for Beck, and a waiter brought another for Marten. The room was as Beck had said, both small and private.

"You know Ms. Picard," Foxx nodded congenially across at Demi. "And this is Signora Luciana Lorenzini, a dear friend of some years' standing."

Marten nodded at Demi, then looked to Luciana, "It's a pleasure, signora."

The restaurant was indeed part of the Hotel Abat Cisneros and was, as Miguel had described it, just down from the basilica and built against the towering mountainside. The singularity of the private setting meant that the president would not know where Marten was until he and Foxx left and Marten tried to steer him toward the door that led to the pathway outside. If the president got nervous and came looking for him, he might walk right into the room itself, something, which besides exposing him physically, would put them at a severe disadvantage in trying to get Foxx alone.

Marten glanced at the doctor, trying to read him as he sat down. The physician-scientist-murderer was dressed in a close-fitting tweed jacket with dark slacks and matching mock turtleneck sweater. The Albert Einstein mass of unkempt white hair was like a trademark. Marten had only to look at his hands to again hear Caroline's voice, suffering and filled with fear-The way he touched my face and my legs with his long, hideous fingers; and that horrid thumb with its tiny balled cross.

Marten realized now there was something else to Foxx's appearance. His physical stature. He was bigger and stronger than he'd first seemed when they'd met at the Café Tripoli in Malta and he was dressed in the bulky fisherman's sweater. From the way he'd stood and greeted him when he and Beck had come in, Marten could see an agility too, an athletic ability, the thing he'd sensed earlier when he'd thought about Foxx's selection of Malta as a place to live because of the mountains of steps that had to be climbed simply to get around. As if staying in top physical condition was something instinctive to him, a habit from his military days in the South African Defense Force. It meant, as the president had warned, that he would be difficult to subdue. Marten would have one chance at him, and it would have to be fast and decisive and a total surprise. What happened afterward wouldn't be much easier, and the president would have to be right there to help.

"How was your trip, Mr. Marten?" Foxx asked congenially as the waiter set a cup and saucer in front of Beck and filled the cup with coffee and then did the same for Marten.

"From Barcelona or from Malta?"

"Either," Foxx smiled.

"Both were fine, thank you," Marten glanced at Demi, who avoided his look by picking up the plate of polvorones and offering them to Luciana. Marten watched her for a brief moment longer, trying to get some sense of whose side she was really on, then turned back to Foxx.

"Reverend Beck invited me to join you because of what happened in Malta. He was concerned that I might have had some misgivings about our conversation there and suggested you might like to clear them up."

" 'Clear them up,' that is a good way to put it, Mr. Marten," Foxx smiled lightly. "I would be happy to do so and will; my only difficulty is that there is someone who should be here but who is not."

"What do you mean?"

"You came to Montserrat with someone else did you not? John Henry Harris, the president of the United States." Foxx smiled again. He was relaxed and matter-of-fact, a simple comment about a guest who was not there.

"The president of the United States?" Marten grinned broadly. "That's hardly the company I keep."

"Until lately, Mr. Marten."

"You know more than I do."

Marten picked up his coffee and sipped at it. As he did, he shot a glance at Demi. It was grave and accusatory, as if she was the one who had told them about the president. This time she did not look away; instead, she gave a faint shake of her head. It meant how they knew was not her doing. She'd told them nothing.

"Might I suggest you locate your companion and ask him to join us, Mr. Marten?" Foxx lifted his coffee cup and held it in both hands, his long fingers wrapped around it, "I think you will both be quite interested in what I have to show you. Perhaps even a great deal more than interested."

For a moment Marten didn't respond. Clearly they knew the president was there, or at least were assuming he was. Denying it would only prolong the situation, dangerously if Foxx had alerted the president's "friends" and the Secret Service or the CIA were on the way. So the question was what to do about it. The original plan had been for the president to remain in the background until Marten could get Foxx alone outside, but with the doctor's sudden and surprise demand for his presence, all that had changed. Even the idea of Marten getting Foxx alone was all but gone. That left them with no plan at all and the president wholly at Foxx's mercy, which was something Marten couldn't let happen.

"I'm not so sure I know where he is. Or even if he's still here. It might take some time to find him if I can find him at all."

"At the risk of sounding presumptuous, Mr. Marten, I think it's safe to assume that the reason the president came to Montserrat was to see me." Once again Foxx smiled pleasantly. "So I rather doubt he would leave before we met. Nor do I think he would be pleased if you denied him the opportunity."

Marten studied Foxx for a heartbeat, then took a sip of coffee, set the cup down, and stood.

"I'll see what I can do."

"Thank you, Mr. Marten. Neither you nor the president will be disappointed, I promise."

90

• 1:15 P.M.

Marten left the restaurant and crossed the plaza, going back the way he had come in. Other than Beck and the women, Foxx seemed to be have been alone, and maybe he was. After all, this was Montserrat, not Malta, where he had a home and was seemingly headquartered. On the other hand, all Marten had to do was remember Salt and Pepper to appreciate the long reach that the South African had.

Demi remained the puzzle she'd been all along. The shake of her head across the table in her silent refusal to accept blame for Foxx's knowledge of the president's being there hadn't helped. Clearly it had been intended to make him believe her, but there were still too many things unanswered, among them how Beck had found him so quickly. Clearly the reverend hadn't been as indifferent to his arrival in Barcelona as Demi had said. Moreover, they had known he was coming to Montserrat and when, and that was something only Demi could have told them. To that extent she had set him up.

Foxx's sudden and deliberate inclusion of the president, however, changed everything and dramatically elevated the stakes of the game. It made Marten even more curious about what Demi was doing. Unless she was working with Beck and therefore in Foxx's camp, which still seemed probable, what else could be so compelling that she was willing to give up the president of the United States to get it, especially now, under the circumstances, most of which she knew well?

On the other hand, if she was doing something else and her head shake meant she was telling the truth, it would mean Foxx's knowledge of the president's whereabouts had come from somewhere else-Miguel or the president's "friends." Thinking that way he had to assume it was the latter because Miguel had proven himself a man far too honest, humble, and forthright for such things, and because by now the president's "friends" would be fully aware he had been in Marten's hotel room in Barcelona the night before and would assume that since neither had been caught he was still with him. Therefore if Marten was going to Montserrat, the president would be too. It was something they should have considered beforehand and been prepared for, but they hadn't and so they had literally walked right into the "Foxx's lair."

Still, they had one thing going for them, if it could be called that-the president had yet to reveal himself. It meant they still had the chance to get out and away before the Secret Service or CIA showed up and the trap was snapped shut once and for all.

• 1:18 P.M.

Marten left the plaza and turned right, walking past the multistoried building he'd seen as he'd come up from the cable car terminal. At the far end he turned right again, passed under a high archway, and then worked his way back toward the restaurant in a group of tourists, all the while looking to see if he was being followed; as far as he could tell, he was not.

At this point he'd made a complete circle and again approached the Hotel Abat Cisneros and the restaurant, where Cousin Jack should now be ensconced, waiting somewhere near the hallway leading to the men's restroom and the door to the pathway outside. Here Marten had to make absolutely certain he wasn't being tailed. Purposely, he walked past the restaurant's main doorway and entered the Hotel Abat Cisneros itself. Inside, he crossed the lobby, took note of the interior entrance to the restaurant, then walked into a small bar across from it. He waited for the bartender, then ordered a bottle of beer, took it to a table where he could watch the door, and sat down. His plan was to wait three minutes, and if no one suspicious came in, get up and leave, entering the restaurant directly from the hotel itself.

• 1:23 P.M.

Marten took a sip of beer and casually looked around. The only people there were those he had seen as he entered, the bartender and six customers; two each at separate tables and two at the bar itself, where a television was tuned to CNN International and an athletic-looking male reporter was speaking from behind the anchor desk.

"In a video just released by the Department of Homeland Security," he said, "we are about to have a look at President Harris at the undisclosed location he was taken to by the Secret Service after the terrorist threat in Madrid. With him are National Security Adviser James Marshall, Secretary of Defense Terrence Langdon and Secretary of State David Chaplin."

Abruptly the picture cut to the video. It had a running time and date stamp that began at 2:23 P.M.(yesterday), Friday, April 7 and showed President Harris in a rustic room during a working session with his advisers.

"The president wants it known," the reporter said in a voice-over, "that he is safe and well and fully intends to meet with European leaders as scheduled at the NATO meeting Monday in Warsaw."

Abruptly the clip ended and the reporter tied it up with a simple "We'll have more on this later." There was a fade-out and a commercial popped on.

"My God," Marten breathed, "they've got everything covered."

Another sip of beer and he looked away from the television and toward the door. So far no one else had come in since he'd entered. Forty seconds passed, then fifty. If someone was following him, they would have been there by now. Marten put down his glass and started to get up. As he did another television story caught his attention. This time the location was Chantilly, France. Two jockeys had been shot and killed early that morning while working out racehorses at a practice track that ran through a nearby forest. The killer had evidently been lying in wait in the woods and had fired from the cover of the trees, then afterward simply walked away, leaving the murder weapon, a United States military-issue M14 rifle, behind, as if to both taunt and intrigue investigators. What added considerably to the mystery was that both jockeys had been killed with the same bullet, the shot passing through the head of the first man and then penetrating the skull of the second. It was a shot investigators deemed either accidental-there had been only one intended victim-or eerily intentional, as if the killer was deliberately demonstrating his skill. In either case the French police had never seen anything like it. Nor, in all his long-ago days as a Los Angeles Police Department homicide detective, had Marten.

• 1:28 P.M.

Cousin Jack saw Marten come in but didn't acknowledge him. Seemingly unmindful of the noisy group of children and parents crowding a large table nearby, he was sitting as planned, alone at a small table near the back of the restaurant's main dining area and at the end of a short hallway leading to the restroom area and the door to outside beyond it. Still wearing his glasses and Demi's big floppy hat, an unopened bottle of sparkling Vichy Catalan mineral water at his sleeve, he was apparently engrossed in a glossy Montserrat guidebook.

Marten stopped for a moment as he entered, then glancing around, casually crossed to where the president was and took a seat at the table next to him. "Foxx knows you're here," he said quietly. "He's in a private room down the hall. He wants you to join us. How he found out I'm not sure, but I don't think Demi told him and I seriously doubt Miguel did either. That leaves-"

"Only one reasonable answer, and we both know what it is," the president raised his head and looked at Marten, his expression stone-cold. "If there was ever any doubt my 'friends' were in league with Dr. Foxx, that uncertainty has been erased."

"If you want more," Marten said, "CNN just played a video clip that supposedly came from the Department of Homeland Security. It showed you in a rustic cabin someplace, clean shaven and with your hairpiece on. With you were the secretary of state, the national security adviser, and the secretary of defense. The report said the video was made yesterday afternoon and that you would still be in Warsaw Monday as planned. As an extra punch the video had a date/time stamp on it confirming it."

President Harris's eyes narrowed in anger. Deliberately he turned back as if to study his guidebook. "The men's restroom is just down the hallway behind us," he said without looking up. "The door to the outside is immediately past it. Once through it there is a service pathway that comes up from the plaza. Twenty feet in the other direction another path leads off along the cliff face, then turns and disappears from sight under an umbrella of trees. Thirty, forty yards after that are the ruins of an ancient chapel, all as Miguel said. Inside the chapel is what is left of two small chambers. Either will suffice for our chat with Dr. Foxx."

"You still want to go ahead with this?" Marten was incredulous.

"Yes." The president didn't look up.

"Cousin," Marten suddenly leaned in, speaking urgently and in a sotto voice, "I don't think you fully appreciate what's going on here. Foxx thought you were coming but he couldn't be sure until I showed up. Now they know, and I'm sure your 'rescuers' have been alerted. For all we know they could be somewhere here now waiting for you to reveal yourself. When you do they'll take you out of here and into their version of 'protective custody' fast. Cousin, we have to leave and leave now. Go out the back way, call Miguel on his cell phone, then wait somewhere out of sight until he comes. And after that, to quote you, 'God help us.' "

The president closed the guidebook and looked at Marten deliberately, his eyes filled with resolve, "This is Saturday afternoon in Spain; the NATO conference is Monday morning in Warsaw. Our clock is fast ticking down and with it the information we must have from Foxx. My 'rescuers' could arrive in minutes or in hours. If it's minutes we're out of business anyway; if it's the latter, we still have time to do something."

"You're taking a hell of a gamble, Cousin, you know that."

"It's only a gamble when you have a choice." Abruptly Harris stood. "Let's not keep the good doctor waiting any longer than we already have."

91

• 1:40 P.M.

Merriman Foxx was alone and making notes in a pocket organizer when Marten and President Harris entered the private dining room. Demi, Beck, and Luciana were gone, and the table itself had been cleared.

"Ah, gentlemen," Foxx smiled and stood up, as he had when Marten first arrived. "I am Dr. Foxx, Mr. President. It is a great pleasure to meet you, sir." He waved a hand at the empty table, "I'm afraid the others decided to go off and explore on their own. And while we might sit here and chat among ourselves, I think our time could be more interestingly spent if I showed you my laboratory."

"You have a laboratory here?" Marten was surprised.

"Also an office and small apartment," again came Foxx's congenial smile. "All most kindly provided by the Order. It gives me a pleasant respite from all the attention and the undue and unfair questions that have long been put to me about the Tenth Medical, as well as a quiet place to work."

"I'm always curious about another man's workplace, doctor," the president said with no emotion whatsoever.

"So am I, Mr. President. This way, please," Foxx smiled once again and ushered them toward the door. Marten shot Harris a warning glance but got no response.

• 1:45 P.M.

Merriman Foxx led them past the crowded plaza in front of the basilica and then down a narrow stone walkway lined on one side with rows of red and white votive candles.

Marten looked back over his shoulder as they went but saw no one. It was curious that Foxx was alone-no companions, no bodyguard, not even Beck for that matter. But then, except for Demi and Beck and the young woman Cristina, he had been alone when Marten met him at the Café Tripoli in Malta. And according to Beck, Foxx had left there by himself, leaving the reverend to escort the women back to their hotel. So in essence Foxx had been alone in Malta and was alone now. Maybe it was simply his choice or style. Or confidence. Or arrogance. Or all of them put together. After all he was the Dr. Merriman Foxx, the man who had controlled the Tenth Medical Brigade and all its covert operations and "innovations" for more than two decades. The same Merriman Foxx who had very recently sat alone through a U.S. congressional inquiry into the workings and disbanding of that brigade. The same Merriman Foxx who had personally supervised the heinous murder of Caroline Parsons and was now a key player in far more grandiose plans for genocide.

Marten was certain Foxx had become who he was out of conceit and sheer will and that by now the idea of bodyguards or henchmen would be an affront to his own force of character. That was unless they were somewhere there unseen and watching, and had been all along.

"This way, please," Foxx turned them down a side walkway and ten seconds later down another. They all looked the same, stone passageways lined by high narrow stone walls that in turn led into others and then into others, one virtually indistinguishable from the next.

The farther they went into this maze the more concerned Marten became. Just finding their way back out and to the area where Miguel would be waiting with the car could become hugely difficult, especially if they were in a hurry. Moreover, Foxx's easy smile and genial manner made it easy to forget that beneath it all was a shrewd, cruel, and ingenious murderer who not only had killed Caroline Parsons but was deeply involved with the president's "friends" and whatever monstrous "plot" they were masterminding. So who knew where he was leading them, or who or even what might be waiting when they got there?

In addition, Montserrat itself was an impossible setting. Religious site and tourist destination or not, it was in reality, what he had feared, a small, isolated city set into a high, desolate cliff face miles from anywhere. A place a man could vanish from in a heartbeat and never be found.

Marten was certain that President Harris was as aware of their situation as he was. At the same time he knew the president had far more on his mind than his own safety and that his primary objective was finding a suitable place to get Foxx alone and question him. Which was clearly why he had chosen to let the doctor show the way, especially in the absence of Beck or a bodyguard or anyone else who might interfere. It was why too, despite his fears, Marten knew he had no other choice but to go along and follow the president's lead.

"We're here, gentlemen," Foxx stopped at a heavy wooden door inset in a stone archway.

"A little privacy away from the throngs," he said with a smile, then slid open a wood panel in the stonework next to the door. Inside it was an electronic keypad. Quickly he punched in a code and pressed the pound key, then slid the panel closed and turned an iron knob on the door. The door opened and Foxx ushered them into a large dimly lit room. The ceiling was high and arched. Several tall wooden chairs lined one wall, while a massive bookcase covered the other. The only other furniture was a large wooden desk with a lone chair behind it at the room's far end. Behind it to the right, an ornate carved wooden door was set into an arched nave.

"This was a church council room for many years," Foxx said quietly as he led them down the room toward the nave, "I merely inherited it."

They reached the nave and Foxx opened the door, then guided them into another room, carefully closing the door behind them.

This room was much larger than the first and far different. Twenty feet wide and probably thirty long, it was illuminated by a series of eerily luminous grow-lamps suspended over two dozen bubble-topped rectangular tables.

"This is my work now, gentlemen, and I wanted you to see it firsthand." Foxx indicated the tables. "No bacteria, no spores, no deadly molecules, nothing to be grown into the implements of war.

"What I did before as head of the Tenth Medical Brigade was done to serve my country in a time of mounting national crisis. From the 1960s onward we were confronted by developing guerrilla movements. There were insurgencies in the former colonies of Mozambique and Angola, military training camps in Tanzania and Zambia, most of it funded and supported by Cuba and the Soviet Union. The counterinsurgency programs we used were developed by the French in Algeria and by the British in Malaysia and Kenya, but they weren't working well enough for the major war we knew was to come. We needed to develop new and innovative weapons, and those included chemical and biological because that same kind of weaponry was being developed for use against us."

"What are these?" President Harris asked abruptly, indicating the rows of bubble-topped tables, as if Foxx's ongoing monologue was just so much idle chatter.

"What I wished to show you, sir. Plant life. Food and energy for tomorrow. Genetically developed seedlings that can be grown to maturity in weeks almost anywhere on earth at a fraction of the cost of such things now. Fruits and vegetables far richer in nutritional value than anything currently available. Variations on corn, soybean, alfalfa, sunflower, strawberry, blueberry, and cranberry. Then there are the grass and forage species for erosion control, pasture, and wildlife. All of which can be grown quickly and easily on a massive scale in almost any kind of soil and require minimal irrigation. Certain varieties of corn, soybean, and peanuts can be grown in the same manner and as quickly and cheaply processed into low-cost, production-level, clean-burning fuel that does not warm the atmosphere. We are also working with a concept known as 'cellulosic ethanol,' a process that makes fuel from farm waste-corn stalks, straw, and even wood." So far Foxx's attention had been focused primarily on the president, now he turned to Marten.

"In Malta you accused me of experimentation on human beings. And you were correct, I did. But only on the terminally ill and with their permission in an attempt to save their lives and in turn save our own people.

"But those programs are all long past. Wholly disbanded, their documentation destroyed. Many of the people who participated in them are now dead. In the twenty-odd years since, in the face of one unwarranted charge and indictment after another brought by people who either don't understand or had political agendas all their own, I have worked alone, either in Malta or here at Montserrat, my vocation dedicated not to war but to the future well-being of the planet and the creatures on it."

"Alone?" Marten asked as if he were referring to Foxx's scientific studies, but really to see how he would react. If indeed there were others they weren't aware of, out of sight and waiting for a signal from Foxx.

Instantly Foxx picked up on the reference. "You mean do I have security people here protecting me?"

President Harris quickly covered for Marten, "I believe he was referring to other scientists."

"Of course," Foxx said politely. "Now and again they come and consult with me. Most work part-time when they can. All voluntarily. We communicate almost exclusively over the Internet." Foxx glanced warily at Marten then looked back at the president. "As for the work itself. If you still doubt me, you are welcome to see the many other experiments that are here and in various stages of development. There are notes, journals, scientific records on everything. All of which you are free to examine. But I must ask you to say nothing of what you observe. None of this can be made known until processes are completed and legally documented and the patents are secured. When they are, the rights to them will be turned over to the United Nations. The profits, as you might imagine, will be staggering."

"You seem to have become quite benevolent, Doctor," President Harris said. "Yes, I would like to see more. The experiments. Your notes, your journals, everything."

"Of course."

92

• 2:00 P.M.

Foxx led them toward another door, this one made of some kind of burnished steel. Reaching it, he stopped, then slipped a security card from his jacket pocket and swiped it through an electronic pad on the wall next to it. Immediately the door slid back to reveal a long, low, jagged sandstone tunnel seemingly cut into the core of the mountain itself and lighted by bare lightbulbs mounted every twenty feet or so on an exposed wire crudely attached to the tunnel's ceiling.

"This is one of a network of mining tunnels cut through these mountains nearly a century ago. Most are long abandoned. Few people even know they exist. We were fortunate enough to make use of this one," Foxx said as he bent low to lead them down a rough wooden walkway raised over a damp floor and next to jagged stone walls oozing here and there with trickles of groundwater. "Once most of this area was part of what is now the Mediterranean Sea. At the time a large river ran from the higher elevations out to the gulf, creating large subterranean caves. Now, millennia later, the caves are far above sea level. They are dry, the air fresh and the temperatures particularly consistent over time. Those things combined with the size of the chambers and their relative isolation create a situation very nearly perfect for my research."

If Marten had been concerned earlier, he was doubly so now. Never mind being lost in the maze of the monastery's walkways outside, this was a place hidden away from everyone and everything, and they were entering it with a horrific criminal. Whether Foxx was alone or not, Marten was convinced they were walking into some kind of trap and that it was more than foolhardy to take even another step with him. Again, he shot the president a warning glance.

As before Harris ignored him, instead turning his attention to the tunnel itself; its uneven jackhammered walls, its earthen floor, its low, jackhammered ceiling.

Whether the president liked it or not Marten knew he had to intervene and quickly. "Mr. President," he said sharply, "I think we've gone far-"

"We're here, gentlemen," Foxx suddenly turned a corner in the shaft and they were face to face with another of the burnished steel doors. Again Foxx swiped his security card through an electronic reader on the wall next to it. As before, the door slid back, to reveal a cavernous chamber twice the size of the one they had been in moments earlier.

Foxx went in first. As he did, Marten took the president by the arm to pull him back.

"We're fine, Cousin," Harris said quietly, and followed Foxx inside. Marten swore under his breath and followed. A half second later the door slid closed behind them.

Marten and the president looked out on a sea of bubble-top tables in a compartment that must have been a hundred feet long, at least sixty wide, and twenty high. At the far end were a number of steel cages,. Both large and small.

"Yes," Foxx acknowledged, "I was doing some experimental work with animals. But there are none here now."

"Do the people who run the monastery know about these chambers?" Marten asked.

Foxx smiled, "As I said previously, the Order has kindly provided for my needs."

Marten saw the president look around, the same as he had in the tunnel. The rough-hewn limestone walls, the ceiling, the floor. Abruptly he turned his attention to a large stainless-steel bench with heavy wooden uprights at one end and a large mechanical drum at the other. In between a second piece of stainless steel was mounted above a dual track that ran the full length of the surface. "What is this, doctor?" he asked.

"A production table."

"It looks like some sort of medieval torture machine."

"Torture machine? Well, perhaps for plants," Foxx smiled his easy, accommodating smile. "Seeds are spread out across the stainless-steel surface, then covered with a special plastic sheeting. The drum heats up and is run back and forth over the sheeting, cooking the seeds to the degree that they are ready for instant planting in a special soil similar to that found in the grow-benches in the other room. It's an incubator of sorts. Like everything else here, efficient, innovative, and harmless."

Harris glanced at Marten, then looked back to Foxx. "Actually, I preferred the idea of it being a torture table. Something a man might be fastened to in order to have him confess his sins or treacheries."

"I'm not sure I understand," Foxx said.

In an instant Marten understood why the president had ignored his earlier warnings and why he had been looking around both in the tunnel and in here. He was searching for security cameras, microphones, other surveillance apparatus. He, of all people, should know what to look for. The Secret Service would have shown him almost everything in its arsenal, an asset that, combined with his own grit and knowledge of building construction, had been the primary reason he had been able to escape from the hotel in Madrid. Marten had been concerned that they were far too alone and isolated, that Foxx had them trapped. President Harris saw just the opposite. It was the doctor, not they, who was alone. While they couldn't be certain they were not under some kind of surveillance, the president was taking the same hard gamble he had by coming to meet Foxx in the first place.

"We would like you to talk to us, doctor," he said quietly. "To tell us about your plan for the Muslim states."

"I'm sorry," Foxx acted as if he didn't understand.

"Your plan. The program you and my good Washington friends have drawn up to devastate the Middle East."

"You disappoint me, Mr. President," Foxx smiled again. "As I have just shown you, the last twenty years of my work have been for nothing but prosperity, health, and goodwill toward the inhabitants of this planet."

The president suddenly responded in anger, "That's not going to cut it, doctor."

"What did you give to Caroline Parsons?" Marten said suddenly.

"You asked me something like that before, I have no idea who or what you are-"

"The Silver Spring Rehabilitation Center in Silver Spring, Maryland. Dr. Lorraine Stephenson helped you."

"I've never heard of the place. Or, as I also told you in Malta, of a Dr. Stephenson."

"Hold up your left hand," Marten snapped.

"What?"

"Hold up your left hand. Thumb pointed out. I want the president to see the tattoo on it. The sign of Aldebaran."

Foxx suddenly bristled, and Marten could see the rage come up in him, as it had at the Café Tripoli in Malta. "That's quite enough, gentlemen. We're finished here. I'll show you out."

Abruptly he turned and started for the door. As he did, he slid a small electronic device from his jacket pocket and started to speak into it.

93

• 2:13 P.M.

In a heartbeat Marten was behind him, his forearm pulled hard across his windpipe cutting of his air supply. Foxx cried out in surprise, then struggled wildly, trying to rip free and dropping whatever the device was he'd pulled from his jacket. But Marten only strengthened his grip. Foxx's chest heaved as he fought for air. Abruptly Marten shifted his pressure to the carotid arteries on either side of Foxx's neck, this time shutting off the blood flow to the South African's brain. Foxx thrashed and kicked. But it was no good. One second. Two. Three. Then he went limp in Marten's arms.

Marten looked to the president. "Hurry!"

The president pulled the belt from his trousers, stepped around Marten, and tugged Foxx's arms tight behind him. Then, as if he were back in his California youth and hog-tying a steer, he crossed Foxx's hands over each other and wrapped the belt around them. Seconds later he and Marten hefted the South African onto the stainless-steel table, sliding his bound arms down over the top of one of the upturned table legs as they did.

• 2:16 P.M.

Groaning, coughing, his chest heaving as his lungs fought to draw in air, thirty seconds later Foxx regained consciousness. Another minute and the fog began to clear from his brain and he looked into the faces of Cousin Jack and Cousin Harold. Then his eyes swung to Marten and his presence sharpened.

"That was a police hold," he rasped. "You were a policeman once. Maybe still are."

The president glanced at Marten, but Marten didn't acknowledge. He looked back to Foxx. "I want to know what you have planned for the Muslim states."

For a long moment Foxx was expressionless; then slowly he smiled. A great, broad, chilling grin full of arrogance, even defiance. It was the look of a learned madman, one fully capable of executing a plan of mass murder and thoroughly enjoying it. "Only goodwill, gentlemen."

"I'll try once again. I want to know what you and your friends in Washington have planned for the Muslim states, for the Middle East."

Foxx's eyes darted between the president and Marten.

"One last chance, doctor," the president said.

Foxx looked at the president. "Mr. Marten seems to have put some rather peculiar ideas in your head."

The president took a breath and looked to Marten. "I think we should proceed, Cousin." Abruptly he slid a half-liter bottle of Vichy Catalan mineral water he'd purchased at the restaurant Abat Cisneros. He handed it to Marten.

Marten took it, then stared at Foxx. "Sparkling water. 'Con gas' as they say here. Maybe a little primitive for someone like you, doctor. An old border cop showed it to me. He used it to get drug traffickers and people smugglers to talk. They usually did."

Foxx's eyes went to the bottle. If he knew what was about to happen, he didn't show it.

"One final time, Dr. Foxx," President Harris said carefully. He wanted no misunderstandings. "What do you have planned for the Muslim states?"

"Peace on earth," Foxx smiled once more. "Goodwill toward men."

Marten looked to Harris, "You have a napkin from the restaurant?"

"Yes."

"The barnyard animals we talked about, held down for a shot from the vet. They don't like it; the doctor won't either. Take the napkin and stuff it in his mouth, then grab his head and hold him hard."

The next came fast and ugly. President Harris pulled a white cloth table napkin from his pocket and shoved it toward Foxx's open mouth. Foxx snapped it closed, twisting his head to the side. Marten hesitated for a split second, then closed his fist and drove it like a hammer into Foxx's stomach. Foxx cried out, and the president stuffed the napkin into the wide-open gorge of his mouth.

At the same time Marten twisted the top from the Vichy Catalan bottle, put his thumb over the top, and shook it hard. The bubbles inside collided violently, compressing into what was very nearly a handheld bomb. Foxx tried to twist away again. But the president had his head in a viselike grip. Marten shook the bottle again, shoved it under Foxx's right nostril, and released his thumb.

An explosion of compressed air and mineral water shot up Foxx's nose. He groaned, the pain in his sinuses, in the front of his brain, excruciating. He kicked and flailed wildly, trying to pull away, to spit the napkin from his mouth.

The harder he fought the harder Marten followed. Shaking the bottle, again and then again, blasting the carbonated water up one nostril and then the other. Foxx was strong, as Harris had promised and Marten had seen in the restaurant. Jerking back, he got a knee up and slammed it into the president's face. Harris cried out and started to fall back, then recovered, holding on as Foxx wrenched one way and then the other, trying over and over to spit out the napkin so he could breathe and at the same time avoid Marten's onslaught.

"That's enough," the president said.

Marten ignored him. Kept on. Thumb over top of bottle. Shake the bottle. Bottle up against Foxx's nose. Pull back thumb. Release cannonade of carbonated water.

"I said that's enough! I want answers, not a dead man!"

Suddenly Foxx's eyes twisted up under their lids, and his flailing all but ceased.

"Stop! Stop it!" President Harris let go of Foxx and grabbed Marten, pulling him away. "Enough! Dammit! Enough!"

Marten stumbled back to stare at him wide-eyed. The prize fighter shoved into his corner, chest heaving, eyes locked on his beaten and pummeled quarry, confused, wondering why the fight had been stopped.

Abruptly Harris moved in, blocking Marten's view of Foxx and getting right in his face. "You're letting what he did to Caroline Parsons run away with you. I don't blame you, but right now your own private feelings are something none of us can afford."

Marten didn't react.

The president stayed in his face, nose to nose. "You're killing him. Do you understand me? If you haven't already."

Slowly Marten regained his composure. "Sorry," he said finally. "I'm sorry."

The president stayed where he was for a moment longer, then turned to Foxx. His head was at an angle. His eyes still turned up under their lids. Mucus and spent mineral water ran from his nose and onto the table. He snorted, trying to get air and at the same time get rid of whatever liquid still remained in his nasal passages.

Immediately Harris bent over him and pulled the napkin from his mouth. There was a resounding gasp as Foxx's lungs filled with air.

"Can you hear me, doctor?" the president said.

There was no reply.

"Doctor Foxx, can you hear me?"

For a long moment nothing happened, and then came a vague nod of the head. The president eased him over, and Foxx's eyes came down from under their lids to stare at Harris.

"Do you recognize me?"

Foxx nodded almost imperceptibly.

"Can you breathe?"

Again the nod. Stronger this time. So was his breathing.

"I want to know what you are planning for the Middle East. When it is to happen, exactly where, and who else is involved. If you won't tell me we will repeat the procedure."

Foxx didn't respond, just lay there staring at the president. Then ever so slowly, his eyes went to Marten and held there.

"What are you planning for the Middle East?" the president repeated. "When is it to happen? Exactly where? Who else is involved?"

Foxx lay silent and motionless, staring at Marten. Then his eyes came back to Harris and his lips moved. "Alright," he breathed, "I will tell you."

The president and Marten exchanged hugely emotional glances. Finally. After everything. They were going to have an answer.

"Tell me all of it, every detail," the president demanded. "What are you planning for the Middle East?"

"Death," Foxx said with no emotion whatsoever.

Then, with a sharp glance at Marten, he bit down hard, grinding his teeth together.

"Grab him!" Marten yelled, moving toward Foxx. "Grab him! Open his mouth!"

Marten shoved a stunned President Harris aside, then took hold of Foxx's jaws and tried to pry them open. It was too late. Whatever it was worked extremely fast. Merriman Foxx was already dead.

94

• 2:25 P.M.

Hap Daniels flung a rented dark maroon Audi around a tour bus and accelerated up the steep road leading to the Benedictine monastery at Montserrat. When he got there it would be needle-in-the-haystack time, fighting through a mass of tourists looking for a balding, toupeeless John Henry Harris and Nicholas Marten, whom he had seen in person only once and then very briefly.

At the same time he would be trying to find an attractive young French photographer called Demi Picard who, as the concierge at the Regente Majestic had said, had short dark hair, wore a navy blazer and tan slacks, and was most likely in the company of a middle-aged African-American male and an older European woman. Add to that the fact that he was following a raft of information he thought was correct but had no way of knowing for certain and going to a place he'd never been. Never mind that he was traveling on little more than coffee, adrenaline, and twenty minutes' sleep.

He passed another tour bus, then several cars, then squealed around a sharp turn. As he did he glanced up at the cliffs above him and got a momentary glimpse of the monastery and the mountainside into which it was built. How many more turns there were in the road or how much longer it would take to get there he had no way to know.

He had come this far because of the story he'd told his deputy, Bill Strait: that Assistant Secret Service Director Ted Langway, still in Madrid and working out of the U.S. embassy there, "has been on my ass all morning asking for a detailed briefing. [Which was true.] He just called again [which wasn't], so I don't have any damn choice but to talk to him. I'm going to check into the hotel, deal with him, then take a shower and a real nap, a couple of hours anyway. Call my cell if you need me."

With that he'd put Strait officially in charge, made certain things were coordinated between his Secret Service detail and the vice president's for the vice president's 13:00 arrival at Barcelona Airport, then gone to the Hotel Colon, where the Secret Service had reserved a number of rooms. Once in his room, he'd taken a quick shower, changed his clothes, then armed himself and left by a side door. Fifteen minutes later he drove the maroon Audi rental fast out of Barcelona, headed for the monastery at Montserrat. By then it was seven minutes past one in the afternoon. Seven minutes since the vice president of the United States, Hamilton Rogers, had touched down on Barcelona soil.

• 2:28 P.M.

"Suicide pill. Poison capsule buried in his right rear upper molar," Marten turned from Merriman Foxx's body to look at the president. "All he had to do was give it one good crunch to activate it, and he did. I worried he might do something like this earlier but I never thought he would have it as a permanent implant."

"If there was ever any doubt of how committed these people are, there's none now," the president said grimly. "It's what it must have been like in the Nazi camp in World War Two. Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, and the rest hammering ahead with their genocidal crusade, all the while they have Dr. Mengele doing his horrible experiments at the extermination camps. Who knows what would have happened if he ever began to use them on a massive scale?"

"The difference now is that our Dr. Mengele is dead."

"His plan isn't dead. Neither is theirs," Harris snapped. "And we didn't learn a damn thing about it. Nothing." Abruptly he looked off, to just stand there detached and silent. Clearly he was thinking about what to do next.

Marten watched him. He'd been too rough on Foxx and he knew it. The president was right. It had all been emotion. About Caroline, about everything she had meant to him for so much of his life, every piece of it compounded by his rage over her murder. On the other hand it was clear the South African had long been prepared to take his own life if he had to. He was a professional in the field of human pain and might well have been aware of his own physical threshold, of how much he could stand without breaking, and that had been both the reason and the motivation for the implant; it was not the fear of death but the fear of giving up information that would harm the cause. It made the president's remark about the commitment of these people all the more terrifying. These weren't a handful of zealots; they were part of a highly organized, well-funded, hugely dangerous movement.

"Mr. President," Marten said abruptly. "I think we can safely assume that at some point Foxx confirmed your presence here to your Washington friends." He walked over and picked up the BlackBerry-like device Foxx had taken from his pocket and then dropped when Marten grabbed him. "I would bet he was trying to contact them when I got him. They don't hear from him and soon, they're coming fast and right here. It's what I said earlier. We need to call Miguel and get the hell out. Go back to the tourist area and hide somewhere until he comes."

"I don't believe they would leave their entire operation to one man to execute," the president said calmly, as if Marten had never made his plea. "Not something on the scale they're working on. I don't think Foxx would permit it either."

Immediately he turned and walked past the bubble tables toward the cages at the far end of the room. "If this place served as his main headquarters, there's every chance his records are stored somewhere here, probably all digitalized and on computer files. We find those and we might have some kind of answer."

"Damn it, Cousin," Marten was getting angry. "You're doing it again. Whether you want to believe it or not, your 'rescuers' are coming. And when they get here, one way or another, they'll kill you."

"Mr. Marten. Cousin," President Harris spoke quietly and without emotion. "I appreciate what you are trying to do and what you've done already. But there may well be something here of immeasurable importance, and I can't chance not finding it. If you want to leave, I understand. It's quite alright."

"If I want to leave?" Marten's impatience boiled over. "I'm trying to protect the life of the president of the United States. That's you, if you haven't forgotten."

"Understand something, Cousin. This president has no intention of leaving until he has done anything and everything he can to find an answer to what these people have planned."

Marten stared at him. Yes, they might find something that would reveal Foxx's plan somewhere in this cavernous underground but it was far more likely they wouldn't. Just finding a starting place could take hours, even days, and they didn't have minutes. On the other hand, he knew they at least had to try.

Marten took a breath. "Whatever files Foxx might have in this place," he said with resignation, "he wouldn't have left them lying around in his outer office."

"True," Harris smiled inwardly. Marten, he was extremely relieved to know, was back in the fold. "And there were only experiments and work tables in the first lab and in this one."

"So there have to be areas here we haven't seen." Marten put Foxx's electronic device in his pocket, then went to Foxx's body, turned it over, and slid the security card Foxx had used to get them into the chambers from his jacket pocket. He held it up to Harris, "I doubt he had the chance to shut everything down."

95

• 2:35 P.M.

Hap Daniels eased the rental Audi into the monastery's parking area, one jammed with cars and tour buses. In front and above him he could see the stone edifices that comprised the mini-city itself. He continued on, slowly, intensely, the thing most immediate on his mind was a place to park the car.

Under other circumstances he would have gone directly to security, identified himself, and requested their help. Parking would have been an afterthought. It wasn't now. He could tell no one who he was or why he was there. At the same time he needed to find a place to leave the Audi where it wouldn't be towed and where he had immediate access to it if he had to bring the president to it on the run. As a result all he could do was drive up and down through the parking area until he either found an open space or someone pulling out, the same as anyone else.

He made a turn and was starting down the same row he had just passed when his cell phone rang. Immediately he clicked on, "Daniels."

"It's Bill, Hap," the voice of Bill Strait crackled through the tiny speaker.

"What is it?"

"Crop Duster's been located."

"What?" Daniels's heart jumped in his throat.

"He's been placed at a monastery called Montserrat in the mountains outside Barcelona. Two CIA recovery teams are on the way now by helo to bring him in. Wheels down at the monastery at 1515."

"Bill," Hap pressed him, "who gave you this information? Where did it come from?"

"Chief of staff in Madrid."

"How the hell did he find out?"

"I don't know."

"Who ordered in the CIA?"

"Specifically?"

"Yes."

"I don't know either. It all came from the embassy in Madrid."

"It should have been run through us first."

"I know, but it wasn't."

"Two teams isn't much."

"More are on the way from Madrid."

"Any word on Crop Duster's condition?"

"None."

Suddenly Daniels saw a green Toyota start to back out of a parking space a half dozen spaces in front of him. He touched the accelerator and the Audi shot ahead. Then he stopped short, blocking the road behind him, waiting for the Toyota to fully clear the space.

"Hap, we've got our own helo on the way. We need you here now. Wheels up for Montserrat at 15:20."

"Ten-four, Bill, thanks," Hap clicked off. "CIA?" he said out loud. And only two teams? Just what CIA were they? Regular ops or some special branch under the wing of the secretary of defense and the others? How far and wide did this thing go? And where did Bill Strait fit in it? Whose side was he on? And how was he going to tell Bill he couldn't make the helo to Montserrat because he was already there?

Just then the Toyota cleared the parking space and drove off. Daniels hit the Audi's accelerator and started to swing into the vacated spot. In the same instant a motorcycle with a sidecar cut in front of him, its rider claiming the space. Hap slammed on the brakes. "Hey! That's my space!" he yelled out the open window.

"First come, first served," the rider said brusquely, and climbed off the machine.

"I was here first!"

The rider ignored him and instead hurriedly took off his helmet and locked it in the motorcycle's storage compartment.

"Get that thing the hell out of there!" Hap shoved the car door open and stepped out.

The rider walked off and in seconds disappeared into the crowd leading to the plaza in front of the basilica.

Hap glared after him, his patience and very nearly his sanity all but gone. "I'll get you, you bastard," he breathed. "One day I'll find you and get you good!"

96

• 2:50 P.M.

It was all colors and images, as if floating through a dream.

Demi remembered only pieces of it.

"We have things to do," the Reverend Beck had said barely seconds after Nicholas Marten left the private room at the restaurant Abat Cisneros to find the president. In no time Demi had collected her cameras and small equipment bag and followed Beck and Luciana out the door. Seconds later they were crossing the plaza in front of the basilica and walking toward the funicular railway that climbed into the mountains above the monastery to the ancient hermitage of Saint Joan.

It was there as they entered the funicular's green car she began to feel a kind of euphoria she had never before experienced. At almost the same time the colors started to come and the reality around her-Reverend Beck, Luciana, the monastery, the funicular itself and the tourists crowding inside it-began to fade. Something in the coffee maybe. It was a fleeting thought that dissolved into a soothing, near-psychedelic mist of translucent crimson and then turquoise and then sienna. A slow, gentle swirling midnight blue tinged with yellow followed.

Hand in hand was the vague memory of walking past the ruins of an ancient church and seeing a small silver-colored SUV parked at the side of a narrow mountain road. A handsome young driver stood by as Reverend Beck helped her into the back seat. After that came the sense of the SUV moving off and then accelerating over the uneven road. Beck seemed to be in the seat beside her, with Luciana riding in front beside the young driver.

Soon they were traveling across a long rocky plateau and then the SUV forded a rushing mountain stream and climbed through an area of conifers; and then they were dropping down into a small valley filled with spring grasses and where a thin layer of fog was beginning to settle. Not long afterward they passed under a high stone arch and then shortly came upon the ruins of still another ancient church, this one near the base of a towering rock formation. It was here they stopped and got out and Beck led them up a steep winding path.

Moments later they passed beneath a towering rock formation and walked across a natural stone bridge with chasms on either side that fell away sharply hundreds of feet below. The far side was in deep shadow, and as they reached it she saw the entrance to a large cave with several monks in dark hooded robes standing watch on either side of it.

"La iglesia dentro de la montaña," Beck said as they entered. "The church within the mountain."

Inside, the cavern rose to an enormous height and was lighted by the flickering glow of what seemed a thousand votive candles. Here, more of the robed and hooded monks kept watch. Then they entered a second chamber. Like the first it was aglow with candlelight. Only here stalactites and stalagmites hung from the ceiling and rose up from the floor in spectacular combinations.

They were partway across this second chamber when she saw the church. It was a place that, in the state of euphoria she still experienced, seemed to be the sanctuary she had been expecting. Entering, she saw a series of stone arches rising far above the nave to form the ceiling, while beneath it two wooden galleries, one on either side and mounted on massive timbers, sat a dozen feet above huge hand-hewn paving stones that made up the floor. Directly ahead, at the nave's far end, was an ornate gilded altar.

Demi turned to look at Beck, as if to question him about it, when she saw a young woman in a white ankle-length dress coming toward them. She had striking brown eyes and a luxurious mane of black hair that fell to her waist. Quite possibly, she was the most beautiful creature Demi had ever seen.

"Demi," the woman smiled broadly as she neared, "I'm so pleased you came."

Demi stopped short. Who was this woman who seemed to know her? Suddenly she seemed strikingly familiar. But how did she know her? And from where or when? Then she realized: Cristina. The young woman who had been with them at the Café Tripoli in Malta.

"You must be tired from your journey," Cristina said warmly. "Please let me take you to your room so that you can rest."

"I-" Demi hesitated.

"Go with her, Demi," Reverend Beck smiled reassuringly, "you wanted to know about the coven of Aldebaran. This is a part of it. Tonight you will see more. And tomorrow, more than that. Everything you wanted to know, you will find out. Everything."

Demi studied him-his smile, his manner of being-as he stood there. At almost the same moment the feeling of euphoria faded, as if whatever drug she had ingested earlier had abruptly worn off. Suddenly she remembered her cameras and the equipment bag she had had with her earlier. "My things," she said to Beck.

"You mean these," Luciana came up from behind. One of the hooded monks accompanied her and carried Demi's cameras and equipment bag. Bowing gently, he handed them to her.

"Thank you," she said, still shaken by the uncomfortable memory of her drugged journey there.

"Please," Cristina took her by the arm and together they crossed the nave toward an area Demi had not yet seen. As they went Demi looked down at the large paving stones beneath their feet. Most had been polished to a high sheen by the trample of feet over time. Similarly, most all had names carved into them; family names, she thought. The curious thing was they were not Spanish but Italian.

"They are family tombs," Cristina said quietly. "Beneath this floor are the earthly remains of the honored dead, interred over the centuries."

"Honored dead?"

"Yes."

Again Demi heard her father's warning and in the next instant saw the tortured face of the armless octogenarian scholar Giacomo Gela. At the same time a voice deep inside her whispered that she had opened one door too many, that this was a place to which she should never have come. Abruptly she looked back, as if for a way out.

Luciana was gone and Beck was alone in the center of the room watching her and at the same time talking on a cell phone. Behind him, at the far end of the nave where the church ended and the caves began, four of the hooded monks stood guard. She realized then that they-and those outside by the stone bridge and no doubt others she had yet to see-were the keepers of this place and that in all probability no one ever entered or left without their consent.

"Are you alright, Demi?" Cristina asked gently.

"Yes," she said, "I'm quite alright. Why wouldn't I be?"

97

• 2:55 P.M.

Marten and the president stared at the horror. Neither man able to speak, barely able to breathe. They had entered Merriman Foxx's most interior laboratory. Come there almost as if the madman had deliberately planned it that way. Were he still alive he might well have had the audacity to show it to them himself. That he was dead mattered little. One way or another, it seemed, he had simply wanted them to see it. Or rather, experience it.

They'd found their way here because there had been nowhere else for them to go. The security card Marten had taken from Foxx's jacket pocket only permitted them to go forward, not back the way they had come. They could enter a room, cave, shaft, or chamber through the sliding burnished steel doors that marked each, but they could not leave by that same door. The security system would not allow it. The only way out was through a similar door at each room's farthest end. A door that, one after another, led only deeper into the core of the mountain and into more of his laboratories.

The first three had been little more than medium-sized, well-lit rooms, either natural caves or carved from the stone itself. Connected by the same dripping tunnels and boardwalks they had passed over at the beginning, each had contained the complex machinery of an advanced biochemist's lab. From the layman's point of view the equipment appeared to be apparatus for continued agriculture study and application. Among them were machines that tested and analyzed water for various contaminants: viruses, bacteria, salts, metals, or things radioactive.

Each chamber was checked carefully and then they moved on. In none had they found so much as a computer, file cabinet, or other kind of information-storage device, primitive or otherwise. What they did find were computer screens with keyboards and mouses that suggested they were all wired into a master unit located elsewhere.

"If I wasn't claustrophobic before I'm getting there now," Marten said as they left the last chamber, then were immediately forced into what was nearly a twenty-foot-long crawl space beneath a huge slab of rock.

"Don't think about it," the president said as they reached the end, then stood upright and started down a rickety boardwalk over a particularly damp section of dimly lit shaft.

The tunnel here went downward at a steep angle and then turned sharply at a right angle and went down farther still. By Marten's guess each section was at least five hundred feet long, which made the combined total the longest distance between chambers by far. Finally they saw another burnished door at the end of it. Reaching it, Marten swiped the card and they entered a narrow entry-way that led to a darkened room beyond. This time he picked up a small piece of wood that had broken off from the boardwalk and slipped it between the door and the wall frame, leaving the smallest opening as the door slid closed behind them. Not much, but something they could pry open if they wanted to, or had to. He hadn't done it before because if they'd chosen to go back it would only have been into the previous shaft or chamber, where the door was already locked. It would have been a retreat to nothing. He'd done it this time because of a sudden and unnerving sense of dread, a feeling that the space they were about to enter was nothing like anything they had seen before, and going back into the tunnel where they'd been would be far better than staying where they were.

They crossed the dimly lit antechamber to stop halfway across at a translucent curtain made of heavy plastic. A slit down the middle ran from top to bottom, permitting entry. Whatever was on the far side was in darkness.

"Light switch anywhere?" the president asked.

"Not that I can see." Marten stepped to the curtain, carefully put a hand through the slit in the middle, then spread it and stepped through.

Immediately a sensor activated and the room was bathed in light.

"Oh God!" Marten exhaled in horror as he saw what was before him.

Row upon row of human bodies or parts of them lined the sides of two central aisles that reached nearly the length of a football field to the end of what was a huge limestone cavern. All were encased in large aquatic holding tanks filled with some kind of preservative liquid. Tanks that for another purpose might have held tropical fish or live lobsters.

Numb with shock and disbelief, they walked forward in silence, Merriman Foxx's last and seminal work before them. The bodies and body parts floated as if entombed in their own dreams. Men, women, children, of every race and age imaginable. Each tank had a handwritten card marked with what was apparently a specimen number followed by an entry and removal date. Dates and specimen numbers of previous inhabitants were neatly crossed out above. A closer look revealed that the subjects were kept in the solution for approximately three months before being replaced. The records were in descending order and revealed that the earliest experiments had begun seventeen years earlier. What the three-month waiting period was for they had no answer other than to assume it involved some part of Foxx's research. Whatever that research was, the questions it raised were enormous. How had these people been selected? How had they come to be there? Where and how had they died? Where and how long had they been kept alive beforehand, and what had been done to them during that time? Finally, what had happened to their bodies-in all those years there would have been hundreds if not thousands of them-afterward?

And then there were the corpses themselves. Tragic, hideous, floating. Their eyes, the ones that still had eyes, stared blankly out through the brine at nothing. The expression of each nearly the same, extreme pain-and with it a desperate pleading for help, pity, intervention, anything at all to stop it.

Curiously, in none was there a look of anger or a seething for revenge. That wasn't part of it. Clearly, they had no idea they were victims of human action or carried a suspicion that anything unnatural had been done to them.

Halfway down Marten stopped and looked at the president, "You know what these people represent?"

"The general populace."

"Yes. And I think they had no idea. No thought at all that they were guinea pigs. They had become ill, that's all they knew."

"That's my sense too," President Harris said. Almost immediately the chilling thought struck, "What if that is the plan? The thing Foxx was working on and finally developed to production level. Disease. Bacteria. A virus. Some kind of massive, fast-moving, deadly force that seems wholly natural and is uncontrollable except by the people doing it."

"A man-made pandemic."

"One that has no appearance of being a weapon," the president looked to the floating corpse in front of him. A woman, twenty-five at most, her eyes pleading for help like the others. Abruptly he turned back to Marten. "The world is already being set up for it. One way or another it's in the media almost every day. Right now all it's doing is alarming the public. With the main beneficiaries being higher stock prices for drug companies and giving more power to those already in power, both declaring they are doing everything they can to prevent it from happening. Yet all the while the real thing is being planned."

The president stepped away from Marten to walk along the tanks, deliberately looking in at the victims, as if to fix in his mind forever the awfulness of what he saw. Finally he looked back, his eyes stark with fury.

"God bless these people here and all the ones that have gone before them. And God damn Merriman Foxx. And God damn all of them who are involved in this. And may God help all of us if what Foxx learned and developed has already been put in motion."

"We need tissue samples," Marten said urgently-his own anger and certainty that Caroline Parsons was dead because of these experiments-muted by what had to be done. "We have to find his files. His notes, charts, everything and anything we can get our hands on. We have to know what this is."

From somewhere came a distinctive hiss. Both men looked up at once. Along the edge of the ceiling, running the length of the chamber, were heretofore unseen gas jets. The hiss increased as more jets opened.

"Gas!" Marten said sharply. "Poison or explosive, don't know which. I'll bet controlled by a timer the minute the lights went on. Take a deep breath and hold it! We're getting the hell out of here!"

"Tissue samples! Foxx's files! His notes!" The president was going nowhere without them.

"My call this time, Cousin," Marten abruptly clamped his hand over the president's mouth and nose and wrestled him hard toward the plastic curtain at the end of the room. "We're leaving. Right now!"

98

• 3:11 P.M.

Hap Daniels watched a lone commercial helicopter come in over the mountaintop. It circled once then dropped down toward the monastery's helipad. Hap knew what none of the curious onlookers could know: the emergency services/VIP helipad had just become a landing site for a covert CIA operation ordered to find the president of the United States and take him out of there.

After the confrontation with the motorcycle rider it had taken Hap almost twenty minutes to find a questionably legal parking space close to the helipad. If, as he suspected, the ops were coming by command of the group the president was running from, they would already know where within the huge complex he was. How many there would be he didn't know, but in all likelihood they would have at least four ground agents plus the pilot and probably a copilot. Then there would be the second helo, circling somewhere out of sight, a backup team waiting in the event they were needed. Whether any of them knew the truth behind their assignment, who had ordered it and why, or that they were making an end run around the Secret Service made little difference, they would all be highly trained operatives whose obligation was to protect and maintain the continuation of government and whose sole assignment would be to rescue the president and get him out of there safely, fast and unseen, with as little attention as possible. After that they would take him to the CIA jet the chief of staff had waiting at the private airfield outside Barcelona and from there to a location even the Secret Service hadn't been alerted to. What would happen after that he didn't want to think about.

What it all did was give Hap one simple directive: prevent them from getting the president onto the helicopter. Somehow he had to take custody of him before they got him anywhere near the aircraft. It would be a hugely difficult and dangerous undertaking even if they were legitimate CIA because the safety of the president would come before anything, and anyone, himself included, who tried to interfere ran a very good chance of being shot dead on the spot.

If they were not legitimate CIA, or if they were part of some special covert branch of it, or even some special operations military force working at the order of the vice president and the others, his task would not be just difficult, it would be about as suicidal as you could get.

Whoever they were, his plan had to be simple, and it was: watch them land, follow them to their destination, then wait and watch. It was when they brought the president out and neared the helicopter his work would begin. With the Audi positioned nearby, his move would have to be ultrafast and utterly decisive. Under other circumstances a specific protocol would be in place. He would call a trusted CIA supervisor and say he needed the name of the POC (point of contact) on this operation. Getting it, he would call out the man's name, flash his Secret Service credentials and say he was the special agent in charge and was taking custody of POTUS himself.

But this was not "other circumstances." He was the last man between the president and his life or death. He would have only one move and that would come in the final seconds, when he stepped from the crowd, held up his Secret Service credentials and yelled who he was, telling the ops forcefully there was just-received information of an imminent threat to their operation and that he was relieving them of their mission. Then he would take POTUS into custody and head for the Audi. All the while hoping to hell the president would read the play as fast as it happened, trust him, and order the ops aside. Surprise, timing, execution, and sheer luck would be everything. The margin for error was zero.

The sudden chirp of his cell phone broke his train of thought. He picked it off his belt and looked at the originating number. It was Bill Strait. It meant the Secret Service helo in Barcelona was readying for a wheels-up to Montserrat, and Strait was wondering where the hell he was.

Suddenly it occurred to him that Strait had told him the CIA helo would have wheels down at Monsterrat at 1515, while the Secret Service helo wouldn't be ready for wheels-up in Barcelona for the trip to Montserrat until 1520. He hadn't thought about it at the time but why that long a delay? Did someone want to make certain the CIA got to the monastery before the Secret Service did? If so, who had arranged it? Someone at the embassy in Madrid or Bill Strait?

"Roger, Bill," Hap said as he clicked on.

"Where the hell are you?"

"Why did it take us so long to get the helo ready?"

"They were out at Barcelona Airport refueling. They'd just touched down when I alerted them. Why?"

"You alerted them, not the chief of staff?"

"Yes, me. Hap, for chrissake we're ready to go. Where are you?"

"Go without me."

"What?"

"I'm tied up on something else. I'll check in later. Go without me. That's an order."

With that Hap clicked off. "Damn it," he breathed. Was the refueling just bad timing or something else? Could he trust his deputy or couldn't he?

• 3:15 P.M.

A thundering, thudding roar was followed by a storm of flying dust and debris as the helicopter touched down on the helipad exactly on schedule. Immediately the pilot cut the engines, the doors opened and four men in dark glasses and wearing suit coats climbed out. They ducked the still-churning rotor blades and moved off fast toward the steps leading to the basilica.

"Here we go," Hap Daniels said to himself, "here we go."

99

• 3:22 P.M.

The ops moved quickly through the crowd in front of the basilica, then, like a wave, turned down a walkway and disappeared from sight.

Hap dodged around a group of schoolchildren walking in line toward the basilica, trying to keep up. A moment later he was on the walkway the ops had taken. Tourists were everywhere. He swore under his breath and kept moving, his eyes searching the walkway ahead, afraid he had lingered too far behind. Ten paces more and saw them turn down another walkway. He pushed around two chattering women and followed, his eyes on the apparent leader. He was thirty at most and very fit with dark, short-cropped hair and a particularly broad nose that looked as if it had been broken more than once. Just then they reached a convergence of walkways and Broad Nose stopped to get his bearings. In seconds he'd made a decision and led the ops down another walkway, one with red and white votive candles lining its far wall.

Hap stayed back as much as he dared, following as they took another turn and then another, then disappeared around a corner. Eight seconds later he rounded the same corner and pulled up. They had stopped at a heavy wooden door set into a stone archway. Broad Nose slid open a wood panel next to it, revealing an electronic keypad. Hap saw him punch in four numbers, then slide the panel closed and turn the iron knob on the door. It opened and they entered quickly, shutting the door behind them.

• 3:26 P.M.

Where they were going inside, or how long it would take them to find the president, Hap couldn't know. He wished to hell he had Bill Strait and the rest of his Secret Service team there; wished too that he could have contacted one of the CIA supervisors so he could know just who these ops were. Even then he would have been unsure if he could trust either of them. It was a situation he hated but there it was. Suddenly it occurred to him that the ops might bring the president out another exit, one somewhere else in the complex. It made him think that his best plan would be to go back and position himself near the helipad, make his move as they rushed the president toward the helicopter.

He was turning, starting to head back, when he saw a familiar figure suddenly step from the shadows on the far side of the walkway and go up to the door. He stopped abruptly and watched the man slide the panel open and punch four numbers into the keypad as if he knew the code perfectly. Immediately afterward he slid the panel closed and reached for the doorknob.

"What the hell?" Hap breathed. The man was the motorcycle rider. Clearly he wasn't an op or anything like it, more like a messenger sent to pick something up. If the ops did bring the president out this way and at the same time his motorcycle man went in, anything could happen, and the president would be directly in harm's way.

Hap moved just as the man pushed the door open. A heartbeat later he shoved a 9mm Sig Sauer automatic pistol behind the man's ear.

"Freeze, right there!"

A gasp went out of him and he stopped right where he was. In a split second Hap pulled him from the doorway and shoved him back into the shadows where he'd been hiding.

"Who the hell are you?" Miguel Balius stared him in the eye.

100

• 3:32 P.M.

It's not who I am," Hap breathed, "it's who you are, where the hell you were going."

"I'm supposed to meet my cousins," Miguel said carefully, all too aware that this was the man whose parking space he had stolen.

"Cousins?"

"Take it easy. It was only a parking space."

"What's in there?" Hap nodded toward the door to Foxx's office.

"I don't know."

"You're going inside to meet your cousins but you don't know what's there."

"I've never been here before."

"No?"

"No," Miguel held his ground.

Hap glanced back at the open door. So far nothing had happened, at least from what he could tell from there. He looked back to Miguel. "I've never been here before either. Let's find out what's there together."

• 3:34 P.M.

They came through the door slowly and into dim light. Miguel first as a shield, with Hap's Sig Sauer tight against his ear. There was one large room with tall chairs along one wall, a massive bookcase against the other, and a large wooden desk at the end of it. Just beyond it, and to the right, a closed ornate wooden door was set into an arched nave. That was all, no ops, no sign of them, only silence.

"Where does that door go?"

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

"Suppose we find out," Hap started him down the room toward the door.

"Who are you?" Miguel asked carefully as they went. Clearly the issue was not about the parking space, that had been a coincidence. This man was a professional, an American. But who was he working for? Foxx? The four men he had seen enter? Or was he one of the pursuers the "cousins" were avoiding? Or was he doing something else entirely?

Hap didn't answer, instead he pulled his eyes from the door they were approaching to glance behind them. It was an instant Miguel might have used to throw him to the floor and run. But he hadn't come here to run away, even under this circumstance. He was here for his "cousins." He'd been waiting at the bottom of the hill for more than three hours without a word from them and anxiety had roiled in his gut. He was certain the reason he hadn't heard was because they were in trouble. It was why he had abandoned the limousine and borrowed the motorcycle from an uncle who lived in the nearby town of El Borràs, then raced it up to the monastery as he had and into the parking space ahead of this American. Why he had gone to the restaurant and learned from the head-waiter that the men he described as his "cousins" had met with Merriman Foxx in the private dining room and that afterward the three had left together, going in the direction of the office Foxx was known to keep there. He was in that office now because of his "cousins." Whoever this man here was, gun or no gun, he would be damned if he was going to let him harm either of them.

"Hold it," Hap suddenly stopped them where they were and listened. There was nothing, not a sound. Something was wrong. Four special ops guys had come in. The only exit other than the front was that far door, and they had to have gone through it. If they had the president and were coming back out that same way, at least one of them should have been posted at it.

It was then Hap realized he'd made an awful mistake. The ops did have another way out and were taking it. "Christ!" he said, twisting away from Miguel, starting for the front door. In that same second a dull reverberation shook the entire building as if it were an earthquake. Hap and Miguel were knocked to the floor. An avalanche of books thundered from the massive bookcase. Choking dust and debris rained down from the ceiling.

Hap was up in an instant, unsure what had happened, trying to regain control, his 9mm Sig Sauer swinging toward Miguel.

"No! No! Don't!" Miguel yelled, throwing his hands in the air.

Just then the door at the far end of the room wrenched open and the ops came through it on the run. Broad Nose first, a second op with buzz-cut red hair and jack-etless was right behind him. Both had machine pistols in their hands. On their heels came the last two ops. They had a man by the arms between them, his feet dragging on the floor. Red Hair's missing jacket was thrown over his head to keep him from being recognized.

"Special Agent Daniels, United States Secret Service!" Hap yelled, his Secret Service ID held high in his left hand, the 9mm Sig Sauer lowered to his right side. "You're relieved of mission. I'm taking the president into custody."

"No can do," Broad Nose said with no emotion at all.

"Repeat. You are relieved of the mission," Hap showed the Sig Sauer. "Don't make it hard."

"Won't." Broad Nose and Red Hair swung their machine pistols at the same time. Hap twisted away, hitting the floor as a barrage of gunfire chewed up the wall where he had been. The other ops rushed for the door. Miguel lunged for his jacket-covered "cousin" as they went past.

Surprised by Miguel's sudden move, the ops twisted away. As they did the jacket came off and their charge was clearly seen, his body limp, his head slumped over. It wasn't the president. It was Merriman Foxx.

Now Broad Nose was at the door. "Get him out!" he shouted at the ops, then squeezed off a burst at Miguel as he dove behind the wooden desk. At the same time Red Hair swung his machine pistol at Hap. It was too late, Hap was firing from the floor.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Hap could see his slugs explode Red Hair's right arm. The gunman screamed, and Broad Nose dragged him through the front door, squeezing off a burst at Hap as he did. The others followed in a rush, throwing the jacket awkwardly back over Foxx's head, dragging him with them. As they went out Broad Nose stepped back into the doorway and sprayed the room with a final burst, making sure the men inside weren't coming after them.

101

Hap was on the floor but didn't know why. He had a vague memory of the motorcycle man bending over him, checking his carotid artery and shoving a handkerchief or some kind of material up under his shirt, pressing it tight against his left shoulder. Then he'd turned abruptly and left. After that things started to fade and he nearly blacked out, or maybe he had blacked out. What brought him back was the sound of emergency sirens outside and the ringing of his cell phone, which he could see clearly lying on the floor nearby alongside the Sig Sauer automatic. Slowly he moved to touch the Steyr TMP machine pistol dropped down from a sling over his shoulder that had been there all along but that he'd never had the chance to use. It was then the motorcycle man came back.

"Come on," he said, "your left shoulder, you took a bullet, maybe two. The police and fire brigade are coming. Get your feet under you."

Hap stared at him. "Who the hell are you?"

"My name is Miguel Balius. Get your damn feet under you!"

Miguel grabbed Hap's good arm and pulled him up, propping him against the wall while he scooped up his cell phone and the Sig Sauer. Then he had Hap's good arm again and was taking him fast toward the door.

Fresh air hit them and they were outside, the motorcycle right there. Miguel helped him into the sidecar, then jumped onto the seat, started the engine, and they were off and flying down the walkway as fire brigade and police units rushed toward them. A wall of uniformed men and women going door to door checking for people who might have been injured in the earthquake or whatever it had been that had so violently shaken the buildings.

Miguel reached the end of the walkway and turned the motorcycle down another. At almost the same moment a heavy, pulsating roar came from the far side of the basilica. A half second later the ops helicopter lifted up over the top of the building, hovered overhead for the briefest moment, and then flew off to the north.

102

• BARCELONA, HOTEL GRAND PALACE, 4:10 P.M.

Jake Lowe and Dr. James Marshall were alone in the special communications room set up in their suite. Suit jacket off, sleeves rolled up, tie loosened, Lowe paced up and down, a secure phone to his ear. Marshall, all six-foot-four of him, sat at a work desk in the room's center, two laptops in front of him, yellow scratch pad at his sleeve, a headset plugged into Lowe's secure line.

"Gentlemen," Lowe said into the phone, then abruptly paused, as if to make certain what he said next would be absolutely clear.

"This is where we stand," he said finally. "The ops have come and gone from the monastery. Dr. Foxx was found dead in one of his 'clean' labs. His remains were evacuated after a brief battle with the Secret Service. The ops did not identify themselves, nor did they identify Dr. Foxx. They left the monastery by civilian helicopter without further incident.

"There was no sign of the president. I repeat, there was no sign of the president. Earlier communication with Dr. Foxx confirmed his presence and that of Nicholas Marten at the monastery.

"Dr. Foxx's body was found in an innermost 'clean' laboratory and strongly suggests he was confronted by a hostile situation. Since neither the president nor Marten was found at the scene and because any doors they might have used for escape were electronically locked behind them, we must presume that they took the only route available, and that was the tunnel to the rear of the lab where Dr. Foxx was found.

"Very shortly after the ops arrived there was an explosion in that tunnel. Most likely, gentlemen, the result of mechanisms Foxx put in place during construction."

Gentlemen.

Plugged into the same secure transmission and scattered across Europe and in the United States were the others: Vice President Hamilton Rogers with President John Henry Harris's chief of staff, Tom Curran, in the U.S. embassy in Madrid; Secretary of State David Chaplin, at the U.S. Embassy, London; Secretary of Defense Terrence Langdon at NATO headquarters in Brussels; chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, United States Air Force General Chester Keaton, at his home office in rural Virginia.

"Are we to believe the president is dead?" Terrence Langdon asked from Brussels.

"Terry, it's Jim," Marshall cut in, "I don't think we can assume anything. But based on the info received from Foxx earlier and from what the ops observed, it's all but certain he and Marten were in that tunnel when the explosion occurred. If that is the case there is very little chance-let me qualify that-there is 'no chance' either could have survived."

"We know Foxx set up a line of succession in the event anything happened to him. It was how he ran the top-secret programs in the Tenth Medical Brigade. But let me ask a very direct question. In truth, can we proceed without him?"

"Affirmative," Marshall said. "No question. It's simply a matter of alerting his chain of command."

"Do we know details of what happened to him? Was the president there and involved?"

"We don't know. But whatever happened, we couldn't have had his body found there and then have an investigation take place."

"People will have seen him at the monastery."

"He was there off and on all the time. He had his office, his clean labs that he openly showed people. Officially he will have departed right after he left the restaurant. It won't be a problem."

"The Secret Service," General Keaton said from Virginia, "the agents who were there will make a report if they haven't already. Then what?"

Lowe glanced at Marshall, then spoke into the phone, "There were two men, Chet. Only one identified himself as Secret Service. It was the president's SAIC, Hap Daniels. Who the other man was we don't know. How either of them got there we don't know either. But Daniels was shot and hasn't been heard from since. When and if he reports in, the orders are to have him brought directly to us for debriefing. Once that happens he will be informed that the ops he encountered were South African Special Forces commandos working under orders to secretly repatriate Dr. Foxx to South Africa for new hearings regarding himself and the Tenth Medical. The circumstances under which he was discovered made it politically expedient that he be found dead at his home in Malta. The South African government fully apologizes for any mix-up that might have caused agent Daniels his injury."

"I don't like it."

"None of us likes it. But there it is. Besides, he has no idea who the ops were and he certainly didn't find the president. And if he says he went there based on information from our embassy in Madrid it will be pointed out that all concerned mistakenly thought the information had come from the CIA and not the South Africans."

"If there was an explosion in the tunnel someone is going to go in to check it out," Vice President Rogers raised another concern. "What happens when they find the president's body?"

"They won't," Lowe said with cold confidence. "That tunnel leads to Foxx's Number Six lab, the ugly one. As Foxx described it, it was designed to automatically destruct if the proper codes weren't keyed in upon entry. At the same time any access to it would be sealed off. If that happened, and according to the ops report from the scene we have to presume that it did, right now that tunnel is blocked by a two-hundred-thousand-pound slab of rock crushed down against the door to the last of Foxx's monastery-side labs. The other end is sealed off by a thousand cubic yards of interior landslide. Foxx was a perfectionist. What's there will look like a natural earth-fall inside an old mining tunnel. There would be no reason to believe anyone would be in there. It's one of a whole chain of tunnels the authorities know have been sealed off for decades."

"Gentlemen," Marshall cut in, "unless the president was in the lab itself, which he might well have been, the only other place he could be is in the tunnel. If he's there he has no way out. For all intents it will become his tomb. If it has not already. How we go about officially discovering what happened and how we recover the body we will contend with later. Right now and most thankfully he and his ideas are no longer an issue. We need to move on, and quickly."

"Agreed," Secretary of State Chaplin said from London.

"Jim-" Langdon jumped in from Brussels.

"Still here, Terry," Marshall said.

"We're damn short on time. The final go ahead for Warsaw has to be given and soon."

"I concur."

"Vote." Langdon said.

His demand was followed by an immediate and unanimous chorus of "Agreed."

"Nays?"

From Madrid, London, Brussels. From rural Virginia. From the men in the room at the Hotel Grand Palace in Barcelona came only silence.

"Then the vice president will sign the Warsaw order forthwith," Lowe said. "Correct, Ham? No backing out from you."

"I'm a hundred-percenter, Jake, you know that. You all know that. Always have been. No backing out here," Vice President Hamilton Rogers said from Madrid. "Chet, you will confirm the Warsaw operation when it is operational."

"Yes sir. You bet," Air Force General Chester Keaton's powerful voice stabbed across three thousand miles of ocean.

"Good," Lowe said, "then we're done and on to the next. See you in Warsaw, gentlemen. Thank you and good luck."

With that Lowe hung up and looked to Marshall. "I want to feel relieved. Somehow I don't."

"You're thinking about the president."

"We don't know for sure, do we? What if somehow he's still down there and alive?"

"Then he's got a hell of a lot of digging to do," Marshall took off his headset, then got up and crossed to a side table to pour drinks. Malt scotch, neat. Double shot for each. Done, he handed a glass to Lowe.

"It's less than forty-eight hours to Warsaw. The vice president believes he's in charge, the others accept it. Even if somehow the president did manage to pull off an Easter surprise it would be all but impossible for him to do it in that time. And if he did, the only way out would be over, under, or through that monster two-hundred-thousand-pound slab of rock and into Foxx's monastery chambers. He does that, shows up Christlike, we get him the hell out of there in one damn hurry. Soon after that he's dead from a heart attack and the vice president officially becomes president. Unnerving, yes, a little. But either way it's still all ours."

Lowe stared at him. "Do we have ops waiting if he does show?"

"In Foxx's office?"

"Or anywhere else."

"Jake, it can't happen."

"Do-we-have-ops-waiting?" Lowe articulated deliberately.

"You're serious."

"I'm damn serious. I want ops in Foxx's monastery chambers and anywhere else he might show up Easter-like. Inside, outside, upside down. There's a whole series of mining tunnels back there. What if he did escape the explosion and is alive and in one of them trying to find a hole to climb out through? What if he finds it? What then?"

"That could take a lot of bodies."

"Mr. National Security Adviser, we are at war, if you haven't noticed."

Marshall studied Lowe for a long moment, then touched his glass to his. "You want it done, it is."

Lowe didn't move, just stood there, glass in hand.

"Have a little faith in your own organization, man," Marshall said. "Have a little faith."

Lowe drained his glass in one swallow and set it down. "The last time I had that kind of faith it was in a son of a bitch named John Henry Harris. Twenty-two years of faith, Jim. Everything was right with him until it went wrong. So until we either have him or confirm he's dead, I don't know a goddamn thing," Lowe's eyes came up and found Marshall's and held there. "Not a thing."

103

• 4:50 P.M.

Matches.

The matches the president still carried from the diversionary fire he'd started in the Barcelona train station to escape the Spanish police. By Marten's count there were eleven left. Seven had already been used to get them this far in the pitch black of the tunnel, wherever "this far" was and whatever tunnel this was. He could hear the president breathing and knew he was resting somewhere close by. "You okay?" he asked in the darkness.

"Yes. You?" the president's voice came back.

"So far."

They had left Foxx's hideous lab at 3:09, escaping the rush of gas pouring from the jets built into the room and going back up the tunnel the way they'd come in. The trouble was the door at the far end was locked and there was no other entrance. It meant they had no place to go except the hideous lab from which they'd just escaped. That left only the tunnel they were in and gave them nothing to do but wait until the gas escaped Foxx's chamber and the shaft filled with it. It was in that moment of terrible realization they felt the slightest waft of fresh air. They followed it twenty feet or so and found a slender opening in the tunnel wall just wide enough for a man to slip through. On the far side was a narrow sandstone passage that dropped swiftly away and then quickly became little more than a crawl space. Marten lit one more match and they could see it continue on for another thirty feet before it turned and disappeared from sight. Where it went or if it simply ended there was no way to know. But it was filled with fresh air and they didn't dare go back to the main tunnel, so they took it. Marten first, wriggling through with his feet and elbows, the president right behind doing the same.

At the end of the thirty feet the shaft turned sharply and they had to inch around it. They continued that way in pitch black for another hundred feet and then the narrowness and tight press of the passage suddenly gave way to a larger chamber and they were able to stand upright. Another match and they could see they were in what appeared to be an old mining tunnel with a rusted narrow-gauge ore-car track running down its center. Apparently they had entered somewhere midtunnel so to know which direction to go was nothing more than a guess, which they did, turning right and moving off in the dark, using the rails as a guide. By Marten's watch it was then 3:24.

Seven minutes later, at 3:31, the tunnel veered left and they followed it. At 3:37 exactly a thundering explosion rocked the entire mountain. The tunnel ceiling fifty feet behind them collapsed and in seconds the entire shaft filled with a rolling cloud of choking dust.

Immediately they dropped to the floor, hugging it, fearful even to breathe. Then, hands clamped over noses, coughing and spitting and still following the ore-car rails, they crawled off in the only direction they could go.

By 3:50 most of the dust had settled and they got to their feet and moved on, one following the other, the one behind holding the belt of the man in front so as not to get separated in the inky darkness, ready to pull him back in the event the ground suddenly disappeared beneath his feet.

At 4:32 they heard the sound of dripping water and stopped. Another match showed the tunnel continuing on around a bend and at the same time revealed a small pool of collected groundwater where the tunnel wall touched the floor. Water to drink and to wash the dust from the face and eyes.

"You first, Cousin," the president coughed.

Marten grinned, "Sure, get the peasant to test for poison before the king tries it."

Marten saw the president smile just as the match went out. The moment was fleeting but in the awful black that followed it was a moment of humor shared. Not much but something.

Afterward they drank and washed out the dust and then sat down to rest.

104

• 5:10 P.M.

Hap Daniels sat on the edge of the bed watching the young doctor finish bandaging his shoulder. They were in the cramped upstairs bedroom of a small house near the Llobregat River and on the outskirts of El Borràs, a town in a valley north and east of Montserrat, that belonged to Pau Savall, Miguel's uncle. A stonemason and house-painter, it was Pau who had lent Miguel the motorcycle and behind whose home the Limousines Barcelona Mercedes was now hidden.

A final layer of bandage and the doctor was done. Standing, he looked at Hap through rimless glasses.

"Usted ha tenido mucha suerte," he said quietly. "Las dos heridas son leves, del tejido blando. Tendrá que descansar esta noche, pero mañana podrá irse."

"He says you are very lucky," Miguel said from where he stood at the foot of the bed. "You have taken two wounds. Both are in the soft tissue. The bullets went all the way through. You will be quite sore and stiff but alright. He wants you to rest for tonight, tomorrow you may go."

"You have much luck, mi amigo," the doctor said in a halting mixture of English and Spanish. "God only knows the reason for it. That is why you have un amigo like this," he nodded toward Miguel, "he is God's helper. Now, if you will permit me, my children await me at supper." With that he said something in Spanish to Miguel and the two started across the room.

Hap saw them stop briefly at the door and the doctor handed Miguel something, and then they both left.

• 5:20 P.M.

Hap took a breath and ran a hand over his bandaged shoulder, remembering the painful ride down from the monastery in the cramped sidecar of Miguel's motorcycle. It had seemed to take a lifetime but in truth had been little more than twenty minutes. Twenty minutes after that the doctor had come.

By that time he'd had a couple of solid hits of local brandy, learned who Miguel was, who the men he had called his "cousins" were, and that the reason Miguel had helped him was because he had identified himself as a Secret Service agent and risked his life to save the man he thought was the president. He learned too that Miguel was the limousine driver who had brought the president and Marten to Montserrat from Barcelona and how he had come to have the keypad combination that allowed him to enter Foxx's office.

Miguel had gone to the monastery's restaurant to find his "cousins." The headwaiter had seen them leave with Merriman Foxx and gave him directions to Foxx's office. He'd been almost to the door when the ops had come and he'd quickly stepped back into the nearby shadows. When Broad Nose used the keypad, he'd watched carefully. The numbers were 4-4-4-2. Remembering numbers came easily to him, the result of too many days playing the national lottery, of too much money spent, of too many numbers remembered out of sheer hope.

It was then Hap had learned it was Foxx who had been the slumped white-haired figure the ops had carried out. He'd known him only by reputation and because of the secret subcommittee hearings on terrorism. He'd never seen him or even seen a photograph of him until that moment when Miguel charged the ops thinking they had the president, and the jacket came off, exposing him.

Why the president had enough interest in Foxx to risk coming all the way to Montserrat he had no idea until Miguel confirmed some of what he already suspected; that the president's Washington "friends" had planned an action the president refused to take part in-a mass genocide against the Muslim states-and that Merriman Foxx was the prime engineer of it. The president had no details of the plan and that was the reason he and Marten had gone to the monastary: to force Foxx to reveal the plan's particulars in an effort to stop it. Whether they had been successful or not, there was no way to know.

• 5:35 P.M.

Miguel came back into the room carrying a glass of water and a small envelope. "Take these," he handed Hap the water and slid two white pills from the envelope. "For pain. The doctor gave them to me. There are more in here." He set the envelope on the bedside table.

"After the ops left and before I blacked out, you went through that door in Foxx's office," Hap took a drink of water but ignored the pills. "I would guess to look for the president. You didn't find him or we wouldn't be here like this. Was there any sign he had actually been there?"

"Please take the medication."

"Had the president been there?" Hap pressed him forcefully. "And if he had, where the hell did he go that the ops didn't find him?"

"My uncle is downstairs with his wife," Miguel said quietly. "Only they and the doctor know you are here. They will check on you before they go to bed. They can be trusted. Anything you want or need they will provide." Miguel started for the door.

"You're leaving?"

"I will see you when I get back."

"You have my BlackBerry."

"Yes," Miguel took it from his jacket pocket, then came back and handed it to Hap.

"What about the guns? There were two of them."

Miguel opened his jacket, slid Hap's Sig Sauer automatic from his waistband, and set it on the table next to him.

"Where's the other one, the machine pistol?"

"I need it."

"For what?"

Miguel smiled gently. "I think you are a good man who must rest."

"I said, for what?" Hap pressed him.

"Age nineteen to twenty-four, Fourth Battalion, Royal Australian Army, Special Operations Command. I know how to use it."

Hap stared at him. "I didn't ask for your résumé, I asked why you need the machine pistol!"

"Good night, sir," Miguel turned for the door.

"You don't know if the president was even there, do you?" Hap barked after him. "You're guessing!"

Miguel turned back. "He was there, sir." He took a step, lifted something from a dresser top, then walked over and set it on Hap's lap. It was Demi's big floppy hat.

"He was wearing it when I left him, part of his disguise. I found it in one of the laboratories beyond the office we were in. The door and part of the wall leading from the laboratories to whatever was beyond them was crushed. Blocked by a huge wall of stone. Probably the result of the earthquake or whatever it was that knocked us to the floor. In a day or two people with heavy digging equipment might be able to break through it to the other side. Even then there would be no guarantee of what they might find.

"Somewhere on the far side of that mass of stone, inside the mountain and those surrounding it, caves connected by old mining tunnels run for miles. If he is alive he will be in one of those caves or tunnels. A storm is coming but for a time there will be moonlight and there are ways in from the top. That's where I'm going. To me your president and Nicholas Marten are family. It's my duty and choice to find them, whether they are alive or dead."

"Your limousine, it's parked out back under some trees."

"What about it?"

"You bring people up into the mountains a lot?"

"Yes, I bring people to the mountains quite often." Miguel was impatient, time was everything, this questioning wasting it.

"Keep an emergency kit in the trunk?"

"Yes."

"A large one?"

"Señor Hap, I am trying to get to your president. Please excuse me," again Miguel started for the door.

"The kit. It has those small, folding survival blankets, the kind that have a reflective side? You know, Mylar, like the firefighters use?"

Miguel angrily swung back. "Why these questions?"

"Answer me."

"Yes, we have them. It's a company regulation. One for each passenger and the driver. We keep ten."

"What about food? Emergency rations?"

"Some health bars, that's all."

"Good, bring the whole damn kit." Abruptly Hap stood up. Then immediately put out a hand to steady himself.

"What are you doing?"

Hap grabbed the 9mm Sig Sauer, stuck in it his belt and put the pain pills in his pocket. "I'll be damned if you're going alone."

105

• PARIS, HOTEL BEST WESTERN AURORE, 5:45 P.M.

"Good evening, Victor."

"Hello, Richard. I've been waiting all afternoon for your call."

"There was a delay, I'm sorry."

"I saw the story on TV about the shooting at the Chantilly race course. They talked about the two dead jockeys. But there wasn't much more."

"You haven't been approached by the police, have you?"

"No."

"Good."

Victor was in his underwear, lying on the bed, the television on in the background. He'd come that morning by train from Chantilly and taken a cab from the train station, the Gare du Nord, to the hotel where he was now, opposite another railroad station, Gare de Lyon. There he'd had a room-service breakfast, then showered and slept until two. After that he'd waited, as instructed, for Richard to call. As in Madrid, he'd grown more anxious as the hours passed, worrying that Richard would not call, maybe not ever. If the night went by without hearing from him he didn't know what he would do. He honestly didn't. In fact the idea of killing himself had crossed his mind more than once. It was certainly an answer. Something he could do. And very possibly would do if Richard had not called by-he set the time-eight the next morning. But then Richard had called and it was alright and he felt warm and wanted and respected again.

"Again I apologize for the delay, Victor. It took some time for the final arrangements to be made."

"It's alright, Richard, I understand. Some things get complicated, don't they?"

"Yes, they do, Victor. Now here are your instructions. Train number 243 leaves the Gare du Nord for Berlin at 8:46 tonight. There is a first-class ticket being held in your name at the customer service window. You can be on the train, Victor, can't you?"

"Yes."

"Good. You will arrive in Berlin at 8:19 tomorrow morning. At 12:52 in the afternoon, train number 41 will leave Berlin for Warsaw and arrive at 6:25 in the evening. A very nice room has been reserved for you at the Hotel Victoria Warsaw. I will call you there before midnight. Is that satisfactory, Victor?"

"Yes, of course, Richard. I always do as you ask. That's why you depend on me, isn't it?"

"Yes, Victor, you know it is. Have a safe trip, I will call you tomorrow."

"Thank you, Richard. And good night."

"Good night, Victor. And thank you too."

106

• LA IGLESIA DENTRODE LA MONTAÑA,

THE CHURCH WITHIN THE MOUNTAIN, 5:55 P.M.

Demi's room was like that of a convent, sparse and very small. A simple dressing table was near the door, a hand mirror and washbasin resting on it. To the right was a commode with a fold-down top. A view of the sky through the tiny window near the ceiling told her it was still daylight. The single bed was hard and had no sheets, only a pillow and two blankets. On it she had set her two cameras and small equipment bag in which she had packed a small plastic bag containing her toiletries and another that held her camera accessories-extra memory cards and battery charger for the Canon digital and two dozen rolls of color film for the 35mm Nikon. What was not there, and what she was certain she had brought with her when she left the Hotel Regente Majestic in Barcelona that morning and had checked again when she arrived at Montserrat, was her cell phone. Somewhere along the way it had vanished, thereby severing any private communication she might have with the outside world.

Or so whoever took it undoubtedly thought.

Taking the phone was an action that earlier would have served as a harsh reminder of the warnings of her father and Giacomo Gela and raised an anxiety level that could easily have run away with her because of the monks, the extreme isolation of the church, and the fact that she had been drugged for her hallucinatory journey to it.

Instead, discovery of the missing phone strengthened her resolve and sharpened her senses, prompting her to remember that she was very nearly to the end of a desperately long and almost impossible journey. One that she had dedicated her life to and one she had so privately vowed to her mother she would complete whatever the cost. Fear or the threat of violence would not cripple her. Not here, not now.

Moreover, she'd not been wholly reckless or her plans without forethought. Beneath the man-tailored shirt she wore under her blazer and just above her waist was a specially tailored belt that to all intents resembled some kind of delicate undergarment but was, in fact, a lightweight nylon carrier for a smart phone; a combination phone/camera with broadband access and special software that made it possible to use it in wireless conjunction with the her Canon digital to instantly upload photographic images to her Web site in Paris. She had done it successfully across Europe and in the U.S., and most recently in Malta and Barcelona. Her main concern here had been connectivity, not just because of the isolated mountain location but because she was inside the church itself. But that worry had disappeared the moment she'd seen Beck talking on his cell phone in the church nave. It answered her question about connectivity and meant whatever she photographed could be transferred to Paris in a millisecond.

As a test, she took a photograph of her room, sent it to her Web site, then took out the smart phone and dialed her number. It took a moment to connect. When it did, she brought up what she had just photographed: the photo of the room she now stood in. The system worked perfectly.

She was about to take a second photo as a system confirmation when there was a sharp knock at the door.

"Yes," she said, startled.

"It's Cristina."

"Just a moment." Quickly she slid the phone back into its holder under her shirt, then went to the door and opened it.

"Are you rested?" Cristina smiled gently.

"Yes, thank you. Please come in."

Cristina still had on the long white dress she had been wearing when Demi arrived. She carried a similar dress over her arm, the only difference was the color, not white but deep scarlet. She handed it to Demi.

"This is for you, to wear tonight."

"Tonight?"

"Yes."

"What is to happen tonight?"

"The beginning of forever."

"I don't understand."

"You will…" Cristina stared at her in silence and then turned for the door, "I will return for you in an hour."

"Before you go-"

"Yes?" Cristina turned back.

"May I take your picture?"

"Now?"

"Yes."

"Alright."

Demi went to the bed and picked both cameras from it. Three minutes later she had a complete record of Cristina, in her white dress and with the background of Demi's room. Half of it shot with the Nikon on 35mm film, the other half with the Canon digital, the images recorded on its memory card and at the same time transmitted to her Web site in Paris.

"Is that all?" Cristina smiled her warm gentle smile.

"Yes. Okay."

There was a pause, and once more Cristina stared at Demi, her look deep and penetrating, as if she were studying her for some very personal reason. Then abruptly her gaze shifted. "See you in an hour," she said easily, and then was gone.

Demi closed the door after her and then stood motionless against it, a ghostly chill creeping through her. Only once in her life had she seen the look that had been in Cristina's eyes those few seconds before.

Only once.

And that had been in the lone photograph taken of her mother just days before she disappeared; her eyes, like Cristina's brown and intense but at the same time calm and very peaceful. Cristina was twenty-three. The same age her mother had been when she vanished.

107

• 6:18 P.M.

Marten and the president moved forward in the pitch black of the tunnel as if they were blind, following the old ore-car rails by the touch of their feet, the same way they had for nearly an hour and a half.

They walked close together, single file, the one behind still gripping the belt of the man in front of him. Four times they had stumbled over something and nearly fallen. The man behind doing his job by tugging on the front man's belt, keeping them both on their feet. Once they'd both fallen together. That time Marten had been in back, and the president, thinking he saw a gaping hole before them, suddenly twisted away, sending Marten crashing down on top of him and forcing out a loud grunt as he fell hard over one of the ore-car rails. After that they began shifting off more often so the front man didn't bear the brunt of the unknown for too long and begin to think he was seeing things when he wasn't or fear that the man behind would suddenly stumble and knock them both to the ground instead of concentrating on where he was going.

• 6:20 P.M.

Once again they shifted, this time with Marten taking the lead. In the past hour the president had said little or nothing and Marten began to worry that he had been hurt in the fall.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Fine. You?"

"So far."

"Good, let's keep going."

And that was as far as the conversation went. It was then Marten realized the president was not hurt but thinking, and probably had been for a long time.

Another five minutes and they switched places. Another six and they switched again. Their dialogue the same each time. Okay? Yes. Good. Keep going.

• 6:37 P.M.

"Today is still Saturday," the president said suddenly, his voice hoarse from the dust and dryness. "Other than the day my wife died, this has been the longest of my life."

Marten didn't know how to reply and so said nothing. A full thirty seconds passed and then the president spoke again.

"I think it is safe to say that by now my 'friends' or their representatives will have found Foxx's body and realized the explosion was a fail-safe aspect built into Foxx's master plan to keep anyone from discovering what was practiced in that lab.

"If they knew I was with him-which we have already assumed-by not finding me they will presume I am somewhere in the shaft, either dead or hopelessly trapped inside it. It means that soon, if not already, the vice president will take charge and authorize the Warsaw killings.

"Once those murders take place the next part of their plan will be put into action. French and German elections will be called for very quickly. Their people, the people they want in power, however they have arranged it-and they have arranged it, because they told me so and I believe them-will be elected, thereby guaranteeing full support from both countries in the United Nations. After that it is only a matter of time, maybe even days, before the genocide against the Muslim states begins.

"On the beach this morning I told you about the annual gathering of members of the New World Institute that is taking place right now at the Aragon resort in the mountains not far from here. I also told you the original plan was for me to be the surprise guest speaker there at Sunday's-tomorrow's-sunrise service, and that that was my destination when I left Madrid. My full intention was to address them as scheduled and tell them the truth about what has happened and warn them about what is yet to happen. I still have that intention, Mr. Marten."

Marten said nothing, just kept walking, his right foot touching the edge of the right-hand rail, leading the way, keeping them on track.

"Achieving that goal is not impossible, Mr. Marten. I've flown over these mountains before. I know where the resort is and in relation to Montserrat. I used to fly crop dusters in California. I know what things look like from the air. Unless we got completely turned around when we entered these tunnels, and I don't think we did, we've been pretty much going in a straight line away from the monastery and toward the resort."

"How far might the resort be, the way the crow flies?" Marten asked.

"Fifteen, eighteen miles. Twenty at most."

"How far do you think we've come in here?"

"Four, maybe five."

"Mr. President, Cousin," Marten suddenly stopped and turned to face him. "Good intentions aside, we have no map, no way to know where these tunnels lead. They could curve without us being aware of it and suddenly we're going in a whole different direction. Or maybe we're not going in the direction you think we are and are on some spur line going north, south, east, or west. Even if we are on track there is no way to know if there are rockfalls ahead blocking the shaft in any number of places. And even if it does run straight and clear we have no idea how much farther it goes. It could end in a half mile or twenty. And the resort could still be another forty miles overland after that. And that's assuming there's a way out at the end. If these tunnels are as old as they seem, with the rails as rusted as they are, they will have long ago been sealed off to keep the public out."

"What are you trying to tell me?"

"What neither of us want to hear, let alone think. That hopeful as you are to address those people, the reality is we may never get out of here. All along I've been trying to find an air current that would suggest an opening. A crack, a crevice, anything we could try to break open or squeeze through to the outside. We've passed several but none large enough or with air current strong enough to make me think it was worth using up what energy we still have.

"If we reach the far end of this shaft without finding something more promising, we will have to come back and look for a side tunnel we might have missed in the dark, if there are any. After that if we still haven't found something, I don't know. I'm sorry to rip up your hopes, Mr. President, but at this stage there's not a damn thing you can do about those people you want to address or the killings at Warsaw or the genocide itself. Right now the only lives that matter are ours, and if we don't find a way out there's a very real chance we'll die in here. With water I give us maybe ten days, two weeks at best."

"Light a match," the president said abruptly.

"What?"

"I said light a match."

"Mr. President-we're going to need every match we have left."

"Light it."

"Yes, sir," Marten reached down and fished the matchbox from his pocket, then took out a match and struck it.

The flame lit the president's face like a torch. His eyes were frozen on Marten's.

"It is not yet seven o'clock Saturday night. Sunrise tomorrow is a long way off. There is still time to get to Aragon and address the gathering there. Still time to stop the murders at Warsaw. Still time to stop the genocide in the Middle East. This president will not die in here, Cousin. He cannot and he will not. Far too much is at stake."

In the flickering light Marten saw a man racked with exhaustion; clothes torn, face and hands ripped and bloodied and scraped raw, every pore, every strand of hair, from beard to head, coated with dust and dirt and grime. A man who might well have been beaten but who wasn't.

If he wasn't, neither was Marten. "You will not die here, Mr. President," he said, his own voice as hoarse as the president's. "Somehow we will find a way out. Somehow you will address those people."

The president's eyes held on Marten's. "I won't let you get by with just that."

"What do you mean?"

"I want your promise. Your word."

The flame on the match dwindled to nothing. What seconds before had been a staggeringly noble idea, an impossible dream, or just a plain crazy hope Marten had bought into, the president had suddenly turned into a deeply personal pact. Raising the level of the game so that the task before them became more than a commitment of mind and body, it became one of the soul.

"You are a stubborn bastard," Marten whispered.

"Give me your word."

Marten hesitated and the match burned out and once more the dark invaded everything.

"You have it," he whispered finally, "you have my word."

108

• EL BORRÀS, 6:55 P.M

Hap Daniels gritted his teeth as the motorcycle bounced down a narrow dirt path and Miguel followed two other motorcycles toward the Llobregat River. Of the three machines only Miguel's had a sidecar. The others were straightforward Hondas. The first was ridden by Miguel's nephew, Amado. The other carried José and Hector, two of Amado's friends. None was older than eighteen, but they had lived in El Borràs all their lives and knew the mountainous territory, with its air shafts, natural chimneys, and entryways to the caves and old tunnels, and the tunnels themselves, inside out. Hap hadn't liked the idea of the others coming along, but Miguel had assured him each young man was completely trustworthy and would say nothing of what they were doing or whom they were looking for even if they were stopped.

"Believe me," Miguel told him, "even if we are lucky enough to reach the president, they won't recognize him-you might not either. To the boys he will be a missing American friend who was exploring the caves and got trapped inside the mountain when the big rock-slide or earthquake or whatever it was hit."

The three machines slowed, then stopped as they reached the river. The Llobregat here was probably fifty yards wide, muddy and fast-flowing from the runoff of winter rains. Miguel looked at Hap in the sidecar.

"There's a gravel buildup beneath the water. It looks deep but isn't. Still, anything could happen."

"Cross it," Hap said without expression.

Miguel signaled Amado, and the first two motorcycles started across, Amado first, then Hector driving the second machine. Partway across Hector nearly lost it in the rush of water. Then he gained control, gunned the engine, and made it across, stopping to wait with Amado. A half second later Miguel twisted the throttle, the motorcycle inched forward and entered the water and started across. The rush of swift water threatened to sweep them away but Hap's weight in the side car steadied it and with a bounce and roar of the engine they crossed to the others. Again Miguel signaled Amado, and the young man led off, taking them up a steep gravel trail.

Rough as it was on Hap, the motorcycle had been the thing to use. They were going up into the foothills and then to mountain trails beyond. A car was useless and walking would take far too long. Moreover, Hap hardly had the stamina to walk very far anyway.

• 7:10 P.M.

The sun dipped over the mountain ridges just above them, putting the dirt trail they climbed into full shadow. Hap was leaning forward, trying to find some way to ease the pain in his wounded shoulder as the motorcycle bounced mercilessly over the rough terrain, when his BlackBerry sounded. He took it from his jacket and looked at the source of the call. When he saw it was Bill Strait, he clicked off, then turned off the ringer. In that instant he thought of the encrypted text message Strait had sent him at 4:10 P.M.

Hap. Trying for hours to reach you. Where the hell are you? Chief of staff reports at 4:08 P.M. from Madrid that Crop Duster was not, repeat NOT, at the monastery at Montserrat. CIA ops took brief hostile fire from unknowns at monastery office of a Dr. Merriman Foxx. Our mission to Montserrat aborted mid-flight. Returned to base at Barcelona. CNP and Spanish intel investigating hostile fire. WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU? ARE YOU OKAY?

Hap glanced at Miguel as he guided the motorcycle up a narrow rain-rutted trail in the increasing darkness. Until a few hours ago he had never seen this man in his life. Now he was trusting him and three young Spaniards with his life and that of the president, if he was still alive. It was something he should have been able to call Bill Strait for; order him to fly a full contingent of Secret Service, CIA, Spanish intel, and Spanish police out here on the double to scour the hills and mountaintops looking for any passageway that would give them access to the areas below where Miguel believed the president and Nicholas Marten might be, and at the same time demand a demolition crew be sent to blast through the rock from inside Foxx's office complex.

There was, and always had been, an iron bond between Secret Service agents, trust beyond measure. That was until now, until all this had happened, and where he, like the president, had no idea how far this thing went or who in God's name he could trust. So as much as he wanted to, as much as he should have been able to do so under any circumstances, Bill Strait wasn't contacted, his message not replied to.

"Damn," Hap swore bitterly to himself. How he hated mistrust, especially when it was his own and he didn't know who or what to believe.

"Hap," Miguel said suddenly.

"What is it?"

"There," Miguel pointed at the sunlit crest of the mountains four or five miles in the distance.

At first Hap saw nothing, then he did. Four helicopters were coming in over the top of the ridge and then dropping down into the shadow on this side of the mountain.

"Who are they?"

"Not sure. Probably CNP, the federal police. Maybe Mossos d'Esquadra. Maybe both."

"Coming this way?"

"Hard to tell."

"Miguel!" Amado shouted and was pointing behind them.

Both men turned to see five more helicopters. They were still in the distance but coming toward them fast at just above ground level.

Hap looked to Miguel, "Get us out of sight! Amado, the other guys too!"

109

• 7:17 P.M.

Miguel signaled Amado and the others to follow, then gunned the engine and the motorcycle literally flew up the face of the steep rocky embankment. The machine roared and bucked and spit, kicking out loose stones for what seemed an eternity and then they reached the top and the terrain leveled off. Miguel drove another twenty yards, then saw the sharp, cavelike overhang of an enormous sandstone formation and pulled in. Seconds later the others joined them.

"Cut your engines," Miguel said in Spanish.

They did, holding their breath and looking back, waiting in silence. All they saw was the darkening rocky terrain of the high sprawling mesa where they were. For a full minute nothing happened, and they thought maybe the helicopters had flown off in another direction. Then suddenly and with a thundering, ground shaking roar they appeared. All five of them. Coming over the ridge-line toward them. In seconds they passed overhead, not twenty feet above the overhang where they were hidden.

The first four were Spanish CNP, the fifth, Hap knew only too well. The big U.S. Army Chinook they'd flown in from Madrid to Barcelona. It meant the Secret Service was here and that the detail would be under the command of Bill Strait.

Immediately he dug out his BlackBerry and switched it on hoping Strait had left a second text message that would give him information he did not have. The text was there: What he saw was not what he was hoping for but not wholly unexpected either.

Hap, tried to reach you again! We've been advised by U.S. Madrid that Crop Duster may have been at the monastery after all and is possibly trapped inside old mining tunnels by landslide. CNP units, CIA and USSS on route now.

More.

Informed it was you who exchanged hostile fire with ops at Montserrat and that you may have been hit. Where the hell are you? Please confirm location and condition.

More.

Ops were not CIA. U.S. Madrid was misinformed. Ops were S.A. Special Forces commandos under covert orders to repatriate Dr. Foxx to South Africa.

S.A. government has apologized to State Department and to U.S. Madrid.

More.

A lot of this doesn't make sense. As you know USSS info on Crop Duster's probable presence at Montserrat and CIA ops mission to retrieve him came from White House Chief of Staff at U.S. Embassy Madrid. How could COS and CIA station chief confuse CIA ops with S.A. Special Forces unit? Also how could original Crop Duster mission have become one to repatriate the S.A. doctor and then to finding Crop Duster at same site? Was he in the tunnels all the time then got caught in the landslide and nobody knew it? Is this something at executive level we don't know about? Maybe some kind of meeting between Crop Duster and the S.A. doctor? Have attempted to make contact with USSS assistant director Langway reported still in Madrid. So far unsuccessful.

More.

If you are able, you are directed to contact Jake Lowe or National Security Adviser Marshall immediately for debriefing. Maybe they'll tell you what's up.

This is a direct order from VPOTUS. Please acknowledge.

More.

Very concerned personally. Where the hell are you? Have you taken fire? Do you need help? Dammit, Hap, please acknowledge or have someone do it for you!

Bill Strait's confusion about the info from COS U.S. Madrid was wholly understandable. That was if any of it was true, which was highly unlikely. The ops he'd exchanged fire with at the monastery were sure as hell not South African commandos; they were as American as Kansas. They knew the president was there and it was him they had come to get. The Foxx thing had to have been a sidebar, part of something else.

As for Bill Strait, it was impossible to tell if he was caught in the middle and just trying to do his job or if he was on their side and involved with it. Did he want to find Hap as badly as he did because he was a Secret Service brother he genuinely cared about or because Hap was trouble and they wanted to make sure he was out of the picture?

Hap grimaced at the thought, then put the BlackBerry away and looked to others grouped under the overhang and now bathed in a harsh shaft of golden light as the setting sun found an opening between distant mountain peaks.

"Ask Amado how far it is to the first chimney or tunnel opening," he said to Miguel, "and if we can get there on foot without being seen."

Miguel turned to his nephew and spoke Spanish, then turned back. "It's only one air shaft of many, and we have to start somewhere. They chose this one because they think that this is about how far they might have come inside the tunnel since the landslide."

"Where is it?"

"About a half mile. We can go the minute the sun sets."

Hap stared at Miguel, then motioned him closer. "If the president and Marten are in there," he said, trying not to have Amado and his friends overhear, especially if they understood English, "we have to find them and get them out before the Spanish police do."

"I know."

"What you don't know is that there are CIA and U.S. Secret Service agents with them. Most, if not all, both Spanish and American, think they are on our side. That their mission is to rescue the president and bring him to safety."

"You mean they might try to kill us."

"No, I mean they will kill anyone who gets in the way. We're talking about the president of the United States. You saw those helicopters. There will be more, a lot more. We're up against an army of people who think they're doing the right thing."

"One man, a thousand. To me that is my family in there. It is the same with you. Yes?"

Hap took a breath. "Yes," he said finally. Standing up against covert ops was one thing, but having to exchange fire with a legion of innocently involved Spanish police, CIA, and his own Secret Service agents, some of whom might be covert themselves, was something else. Still, they had no choice. "What about the boys?" he said.

"I will take care of the boys."

"You have the first-aid kit from the limo?"

"Yes."

"Take out the survival blankets. You take three and give me four."

"Alright," Miguel nodded, then watched Hap a half second longer. "How is your shoulder?"

"It hurts like hell."

"The pain pills."

"This is no time or place to be drugged up."

"Any more bleeding?"

"Not that I know. Your doctor did a good job."

"Can you walk?"

"Yes, I can walk, dammit!"

"Then let's go," Miguel stood abruptly and went to the motorcycle. He snapped open its storage compartment and took seven of the small folded, Mylar-coated survival blankets from the first-aid kit and a half dozen health bars. Next came a water-filled camel-pack, two large flashlights, and the Steyr machine pistol. He gave four of the survival blankets and half the health bars to Hap, handed him a flashlight and stuck the other in his belt, then slipped the camel pack over his shoulders and slung the machine pistol across his chest. As he did, the shaft of sunlight abruptly dimmed to the deep purple of twilight as the sun passed behind the mountain peaks. Immediately he signaled to the others. A half beat later the five started off across the rock and scrub mesa.

110

• 7:32 P.M.

Twice Marten and the president had picked their way over and through enormous piles of dirt and rock, the result of underground landslides. It would have been difficult under any circumstances, but in the pitch black it had been impossible to know how far the slide reached and if what they were doing was nothing more than removing stones from a mountain, all the while eating up precious time. Still, they'd done it, then broken through and kept on.

Somehow we will find a way out. Somehow you will address those people.

Marten's emotional promise to the president had concentrated their efforts on a search for an air current that would lead them to a passage large enough to squeeze through, break through, or climb out of. To do that they needed an open flame that would burn far longer than a match, and to that end Marten dedicated his cotton undershirt, rolled up tight, with one end torn loose and hanging down to serve as a wick. It took two of the precious few matches left to get it going. When it did it burned long enough to get them several hundred yards farther down the tunnel, where they stumbled on a pile of long-abandoned tools. Most were rusted through or rotted away, but among them they found three they could use. One was a sledgehammer with its handle still secured to its head. The other two were picks, or rather a pick and a pick handle that held angled down served as a kind of torch and replaced Marten's undershirt, which had burned to little more than a rag and had to be abandoned. The pick handle's light was merely a glow compared to the burning shirt but in the unbearable darkness it enabled them to illuminate the tunnel a good fifteen feet in front of them.

By now they no longer walked single file but side by side in the center of the rails with Marten carrying the pick and sledgehammer, President Harris the torch. Both were hungry and nearing exhaustion but those were words never mentioned. Instead their focus was on the torch, with each man silent, waiting, praying, for the flare up that would indicate an air current.

"I have no proof," the president said suddenly. "None at all."

"Of what?"

"Of anything," he looked to Marten, his expression grave. It became all the more so as he put his thoughts into words. "As you know, the original plan was for me to take the information we got from Foxx and call the secretaries general of the United Nations and NATO and the editors-in-chief of the Washington Post and New York Times and tell them all the truth. Instead we find ourselves trying to find a way out of these godforsaken tunnels so that I can address the congregation at Aragon. But why? To tell them what? That there is a massive conspiracy under way and that Dr. Foxx had full knowledge of its particulars?

"What good is that? Foxx is dead, the details for the genocide dead with him. His secret lab and everything in it we can assume is wholly destroyed because he planned it that way. We can say what we saw, but it's not there. My 'friends' will say I am 'ill,' that I have suffered a breakdown. That fleeing from my hotel room in Madrid in the manner I did and then running away and hiding are confirmation of it.

"You can stand up for me but it will do no good. President or not, it simply becomes my word against all of theirs. If I accuse them of planning the Warsaw assassinations they will smile compassionately as if that is proof of my illness and then simply postpone them. If I accuse them of plotting genocide against the Muslim states, I become even crazier, a ranting fool." In the dim flickering light, Marten saw the president's eyes fixed on his, and they were filled with utter despair. "I have no proof, Mr. Marten, of anything."

"No, you don't," Marten said forcefully, "but you can't forget the bodies, the body parts, the faces of those people floating in the tanks."

"Forget them? Their images are branded into me as if they were molten steel. But without some kind of proof… they never existed."

"But they did exist."

The president looked back to the torch and walked on in silence, his shoulders hunched forward, almost as if he had given up. For the first time Marten realized that while it was personal courage and sheer determination that had brought him this far, the president was not the kind of man who was most comfortable alone and in his own company. He wanted others around him. He wanted the give-and-take of it, even to the point of disagreement. Perhaps to help him clarify his own thoughts or get another perspective on things, or to find some level of inspiration he had either lost or never had.

"Mr. President," Marten said firmly, "you must address the convention at Aragon. Speak of the Warsaw assassinations. Tell them what has happened. Tell them how and where and when and by whom the idea and then the ultimatum was presented to you. Do that and what you said will be correct. Your 'friends' will have no choice but to call off the killings, at least for now. If they don't they will prove you were right. In the meantime antennas will go up everywhere. You are still the president of the United States. The public will listen. The media will listen. You can order an investigation into everything Foxx was involved with, the same way you can order an investigation of your 'friends.' Yes, you will be putting yourself on the spot, but no more than you already have. Just the act of making it all public, whatever the reaction, will slow, maybe even stop, what they are planning to do.

"No, you don't have the evidence you would like, but it's something. You don't always need the deed to be done to kill its intent. If nothing else, you will have saved the lives of the president of France and the chancellor of Germany."

The president looked over as they walked. In the faint light of the torch Marten could see the extreme weariness in him. The burden that was his, the toll it had taken, was taking still. He wished there were some way to ease it. He wished to hell that they could just sit down for a steak and a beer or a dozen beers and talk about baseball or the weather and forget everything else.

"Would you like to stop and rest for a few minutes?" he asked quietly.

For the briefest moment there was no response. Then, almost as if he had shifted into some other gear, the president's eyes sharpened, his shoulders came back, and he stood upright once again.

"No, Mr. Marten, we'll keep going."

111

• 7:40 P.M.

Bill Strait watched the darkening landscape below as they circled the area one last time and then came in across the flat of a rocky mesa. Seconds later the big Chinook helicopter touched down in a storm of flying dust and dry vegetation and the pilot cut the engines. Strait glanced across at Jake Lowe and National Security Adviser James Marshall, then unbuckled his harness and was the first out the door as the crewman pulled it open. Lowe, Marshall, and then seventeen Secret Service agents followed. Lowe and Marshall were dressed in hastily put together wardrobes of khaki pants, hiking shoes, and ski parkas. The agents, like Bill Strait, were armed, and wore jeans, windbreakers, and hiking boots. All carried night-vision goggles.

"This way," Strait said, then ducked under the still-churning rotors and walked rapidly toward a Spanish CNP helicopter that had touched down on a rocky shelf fifty yards away and where CNP Captain Belinda Diaz waited with her twenty-man team.

Strait, in the absence of Hap Daniels, had become the SAIC, the special agent in charge of the entire mission. The situation-as the USSS, the CIA, and the CNP understood-was that the president was assumed to be somewhere in the tunnels, trapped there after what was officially being called "an earth movement." Although he was thought to be in the company of a man named Nicholas Marten it was necessarily assumed there could be others and that the president was now, and had been all along, a victim of foul play and therefore in grave danger. The mission, therefore, was a "live rescue" and was to be treated that way until they knew otherwise.

In all, nine helicopters had come in to land at exterior coordinates of a circular ten-mile perimeter. Aside from the Chinook, the other eight helos were CNP. Five carried twenty-man squads of heavily armed CNP mountain-trained police. The remaining three had eighteen-man CIA teams. All nine carried a two-man sound unit, audio experts equipped with hi-tech listening devices. In addition three more eighteen-man CIA teams were en route from Madrid and one hundred Secret Service agents were coming in from the USSS controlling field office in Paris to land at Costa Brava Airport in Gerona to then be ferried to the site here by CNP helicopters. ETA here for the CIA/Madrid teams was 8:20 P.M. For the USSS/Paris, 9:30 P.M.

• 7:44 P.M.

Captain Diaz glanced at Lowe and Marshall, then looked to Bill Strait. "We are here," she said in English, her right index finger touching a terrain map open on the ground as a radio clipped to her belt crackled in Spanish with the give-and-take of CNP communication between other units. Diaz was probably thirty-five, attractive, confident and very fit, and, like all the CNP, heavily armed and dressed in a camouflage jumpsuit.

"We are looking at a large mountainous area covering approximately one hundred square miles." Diaz put the terrain map aside and opened another. It was a copy of a 1922 ore company map showing the location of its shafts. Diaz pointed to it.

"These lines represent the tunnels in use at the time the mine was closed. As you can see, the main shafts run here, here, here, and here. The largest tunnel coming from the direction of the monastery would be this one," she indicated a line drawn in red, "and the one a person or group coming from there most likely would follow if they were trying to get out. That is, as far as we can tell. These tunnels, these shafts, are very old, not used for more than eighty years. Sections of many will have collapsed. It means the map is helpful but not reliable."

"Suppose they did take this tunnel," Strait said. "Two of them or twenty," Strait indicated the main shaft, "and using the 3:37 time of the earth movement as a starting time, how far would they be along it by now?"

"It would depend on the state of the president's health. If they have to carry him. Or stop to give him medical attention. Or if they have lights. As you might imagine, the shafts are dark as a tomb. Also if they chose this tunnel and not one of the several dozen others down there."

"Might they have gone another way?"

"We are not with them. They could have done anything for any reason. This main tunnel could have been blocked and so they took some other. We have come to this location because it is the most direct and therefore the most likely route out if it has not been blocked by cave-ins. We are on the outermost edge of it and will make our way toward the monastery while other teams will work from there toward us while others still will explore the side tunnels. We-" Diaz stopped suddenly to listen to a radio communication directed at her.

"Sí, sí," she said finally into the tiny microphone on her lapel. "Gracias." Again she glanced at Lowe and Marshall, then turned to Bill Strait.

"Drilling equipment is being flown in now. Soon they will begin to bore into the tunnels from above and then send down night-vision cameras equipped with listening devices."

"Good," Strait said, then turned back to the map. "Assume they are in this tunnel. How close are we to an exterior entryway, a chimney where we can get in?"

"Very difficult to answer. The chimneys are not mapped. We have to find them and have asked help from the Agentes Rurales, the mountain and forest patrol, who know the area. But even if we find chimneys or access points there is no way to know how big they are. If someone can get down and into the shaft or if they would have to be cut or drilled or blasted. Something else," Captain Diaz shifted her gaze to take in Marshall and Jake Lowe, "something you must understand, gentlemen. It is quite possible that those inside, if in fact they are down there, are dead, your president included."

"That's why we're here, captain," Lowe said quietly. "One way or the other, we're going to bring him out."

112

• PARIS, GARE DU NORD, 8:10 P.M.

"Thank you," Victor smiled and pocketed his first-class ticket, then turned from the passenger services window and walked back toward the platform area. Train 243 for Berlin was to leave at 8:46 but would not arrive in the station until 8:34. That gave him a little more than thirty minutes to kill. The last ten would be spent on the train making sure he had his assigned seat and that his suitcase was stored. Taking one's seat early was important because even with a reservation people often sat where they wanted. If one's assigned seat was already taken trying to get it back usually involved some level of confrontation that was often in a foreign language. He had seen more than one of these become heated, and an argument over a seat that might bring a trainman or the police was the last thing he needed; especially the police, who might ask to see his passport and want to know where he was going and where he had been. But at the moment there was no train and therefore no seat, which meant he still had nearly twenty minutes to either sit and wait or wander around the station, neither of which he liked because it left him at the mercy of the public. The major story of the day, at least in the Paris tabloids, seemed to be the single-shot murder of the two jockeys early that morning in Chantilly. And newspapers at kiosks throughout the station had it as their lead.

L'OMS A TUÉ LES JOCKEYS?

DEUX AVEC UN PROJECTILE!

MUERTRE DANS LES BOIS DE CHANTILLY!

(Who killed the jockeys?

Two with one shot!

Murder in the Chantilly woods!)

Chantilly was twenty minutes by train from Paris, and the Gare du Nord, where he was now, was the same station he had arrived in when he'd come from Chantilly. How did he know that someone there, someone he might simply pass by, hadn't seen him in both places; a railroad worker maybe or a commuter he had shared the morning train with who was returning home and might suddenly remember him?

Victor kept his head down as he walked. When he had killed the man in the New York Yankees jacket in Washington, Richard had been right there to meet him and get him out of there, driving him straight to the airport and putting him on a plane before the story was even reported. Here it was different, here he was alone and at the mercy of the faces in the crowd and he didn't like it. All he wanted was for the train to come so that he could board it and claim his seat and at least get that much out of sight.

He carried his bag into a small restaurant across from the tracks. There was room at the counter and he sat down. "Coffee," he said to the counterman, "black, please."

"Café noir?"

Victor nodded. "Café noir."

113

• LA IGLESIA DENTRODE LA MONTAÑA,

THE CHURCH WITHIN THE MOUNTAIN. 8:20 P.M.

Demi walked alongside the line of sixty monks, photographing them as they left the candlelit caverns and entered the church, walking single file, heads bowed, chanting as they went. She used the Canon digital first and then switched to the 35mm Nikon, then back to the Canon, the smart phone concealed beneath the long scarlet dress Cristina had brought her, secretly transmitting the Canon's images to her Web site in Paris.

The monks' collective song echoed off the temple's stone surfaces like a delicate prayer, its single melodic line rising and then slowly falling only to rise once more. At first Demi thought the chant, like the family names on the great stones above the burial vaults on the church floor, was in Italian but it wasn't. Nor was it Spanish. Instead it was sung in a language she had never before heard.

The monks circled the church once and then again and then left, passing through a high portal to an ancient stone amphitheater outside. There the verse was repeated twice more and then twice again as they formed a semicircle in the light of three bonfires that burned in a triangle on the outside edges of a massive circular stone. A stone that was the amphitheatre's centerpiece and had carved at its midpoint the balled cross of Aldebaran.

Demi moved guardedly to a place across from the bonfires, near the amphitheater's seating area where there were easily two hundred spectators-men, women, children-the very old to infants held in their mother's arms. All were dressed in the same long scarlet gown Demi wore.

Beyond the bonfires she could see the valley she had passed through on the way there and where the thin ground fog of earlier in the day had now grown heavy, rising up like sea mist and beginning to swirl in around them. Above everything rose the high mountain peaks, which served to isolate the church and over which a full moon slowly ascended above darkening clouds.

Suddenly the monks' chant stopped and for a long moment there was silence. Then a powerful male voice rose from the dark behind them. Deep and melodic, it sounded as if it were some kind of pagan calling, a brief prayer to the spirits spoken in the same language as the monks.

Immediately the spectators responded as if a chorus, repeating in unison whatever had been said.

The voice came as before, carrying out from the darkness. Then a hooded, black-robed figure stepped into the light of the bonfires and moved to the center of the stone circle. Instantly the figure raised its arms and threw back its head. Demi felt the breath go out of her. It was Reverend Beck, the first time she'd seen him since they'd arrived. Immediately she stepped away from the congregation and into the shadows. Cameras up, she began photographing deliberately: Beck, the congregation, the monks, using one camera and then the other as she had before.

Head thrown back, arms held high above his head, Beck thundered a command to the heavens as if he were reaching to the moon and beyond to call spirits forth from the night. Immediately he turned to the darkness between the bonfires. Again he raised his arms and spoke the same command he had just thrown toward the sky. For a long moment nothing happened and then a vision in white slowly appeared from the dark, moving past the bonfires into the circle.

Cristina.

Beck turned toward the congregation and spoke again, his right arm extended, making a sweep of the stone's great circle. The congregation responded. Repeating what he had said and then adding words that Demi could describe only as sounding like the names of distant stars. There were four in all, spoken quickly and in staccato as if they were calling forth gods.

Cameras firing, Demi inched closer.

Now Beck stepped out of the firelight. In his place, so quickly it almost seemed like a magical trick, Luciana appeared. Her robe was bright gold and in her hand she carried a long, ruby wand. Her rich black hair was pulled back in a tight bun. Equally dark eye makeup was accentuated by theatrical streaks that ran dagger-like from the corners of her eyes to the hollows of her ears, while hideously long nails, eleven inches easily, were fixed to the tips of her fingers.

In a move as graceful as a ballerina's, she stepped behind Cristina and drew a circle in the air above her head with the wand. Then, with the same suppleness, she stepped away to pass the wand around the great circle of stone. Done, she looked to the congregation. Her bearing and manner that of the high priestess, the sacerdotessa, she was. Abruptly she called out a phrase filled with power and certainty, as if she had just cast a spell. Then she stepped forward to the circle's edge, her eyes moving fiercely across the congregation and called out the certainty once more.

And then again.

And then again.

114

• 8:47 P.M.

Listen!" Marten said and stopped, the axe-handle torch burned short and now little more than a flicker in the pitch black of the tunnel.

"What is it?" The president stopped too.

"Don't know. Sounded like it came from behind us."

They listened intently, but there was nothing.

"Maybe I'm crazy-" Marten said at the silence, then: "There. Hear it?"

From somewhere behind them came a distant high-pitched screeching. It went on for maybe twenty seconds, stopped, then started again.

"Drilling," the president said quickly, "through stone. I've cut enough wells to know the sound."

"Your 'rescuers' have arrived. They know we're here."

"No, they think we're here. But they're still behind us. A mile, more if we're lucky." Instantly the president's eyes found Marten's. "Once they cut into the tunnel they'll drop in listening equipment, maybe night-vision cameras. Sound carries through these shafts almost as sharply as it would under water."

"How many do you think there are?"

"Up there, coming after us?"

"Yes."

"Too many. From here on not a word above a whisper. And whatever that word is, make it damn short."

Marten stared at him for the briefest moment, then turned the torch forward and they moved on.

• 8:50 P.M.

The expanse of rock they were crossing was black as midnight. Miguel stopped and swung his flashlight behind him, lighting the way for a lagging Hap Daniels to catch up.

"Careful with that damn light, you can see it for miles," Hap rasped as he came forward. By now he was cradling his left arm in a sling fashioned from his necktie to help ease the strain on his shoulder.

Behind them a full moon struggled through thickening clouds descending over the distant mountaintops. Rain was coming and they knew it. When it would arrive, how heavy it would be, and how much time they had before it reached them were unanswerable questions.

"You sure you want to keep on?" Miguel was watching Hap as he moved close. It was obvious he was struggling and in pain.

"Yes, dammit."

"You want to rest for a minute? Take the pain pills?"

"Where the hell are the guys?"

"Here!" Amado's voice popped from the dark a dozen yards in front of them. Instantly Miguel swung his flashlight toward a rocky precipice twenty feet away.

"Jesus God!" Hap grabbed Miguel's arm with his good hand, "turn that thing off!"

• 8:52 P.M.

Hap and Miguel peered into a fissure in the rocks below. Ten feet down Hector and José huddled around a large fracture in the stone, their flashlights illuminating the way for Amado as he climbed down into it. A second later he disappeared from sight. Immediately José followed.

"How far does it go?" Miguel asked just loud enough to be heard.

"Maybe thirty feet more," Amado answered from below.

"To what?"

"Another break in the rock."

"When you reach it use the stones. See what you get."

Miguel took a breath and looked at Hap. Then they waited.

Three full minutes passed. Finally they heard it.

CLACK, CLACK. CLACK, CLACK. CLACK, CLACK.

Amado was hitting two stones together in the shaft below, making a sound that would carry a great distance through the rock openings and hopefully into the hard surface of the tunnel underneath.

CLACK, CLACK. CLACK, CLACK. CLACK, CLACK.

Amado tapped the stones again.

All five held a collective breath listening for a return signal.

Finally they heard Amado's voice. "Nothing."

"Again!" Miguel demanded.

"No! No more!" Hap said sharply. "That's the end of it!"

"Why?" Miguel stared at him in surprise, "How else are we going to find them in an endless tunnel?"

"Miguel, the Spanish police, the Secret Service, the CIA. They will have brought in all kinds of listening and night-vision devices. If the president and Marten can hear those rocks, they will too. They find us, we will vanish. All of us, the boys, you, me. Then the president is dead."

"So what do we do?"

"Find a way into the tunnel and walk it."

"Walk it?"

"Flashlights. Mark where we came in, mark our trail along the way so we can get back. Amado and his friends know their way inside these tunnels. That's why we're here, yes?"

Miguel nodded.

"My men don't know those shafts, and I'm betting the Spanish police don't either."

Miguel's face twisted up in anguish. "We're five against all that. It's not possible."

"Yes it is. We just have to do it better and faster and very, very quietly."

"Hap, you are in no shape to climb down in there. Stay here, I'll go with the boys."

"Can't."

"Why?"

"I don't know the exact satellite positions. But at some point soon they will be directly overhead. When they are they will provide thermal images of the heat radiated by bodies on the ground. The authorities know who their men are, where they are, and how many."

"You mean they will be able to see us."

"They'll see whoever's out here that isn't one of theirs."

"Then I think you better go down into the shafts."

"Right."

115

• 9:03 P.M.

Jake Lowe and Dr. James Marshall stood just outside the Chinook helicopter looking toward a rocky flat where Bill Strait's Secret Service team and Captain Diaz's CNP unit had set up work lights and were cutting their way down through the soft sandstone with power saws.

Behind them, inside the Chinook, a medical team-two doctors, two nurses and two emergency medical technicians-made preparations to receive an injured president. Thirty yards away Bill Strait, Captain Diaz and a seven-man team of Secret Service, CIA, and CNP tech specialists worked to set up a command post from which they could coordinate the activity of the teams in the field.

Lowe glanced behind them to make sure they were alone, then looked at Marshall. "The Spanish police could be a real problem if the president is alive and says something," he said quietly.

"We can't very well send them home."

"No, we can't."

"Jake," Marshall stepped closer and lowered his voice. "The police believe what everyone else believes, that the president is either dead, the captive of Marten or a terrorist bunch, or simply stumbling along mentally ill. If they bring him out alive anything he says will be taken as the ramblings of a man who has undergone major psychological trauma. In minutes he'll be here and in the Chinook and then we're gone."

"It's still too damn iffy. Too much can still go wrong," Lowe looked off, clearly troubled, then abruptly turned back to Marshall. "I'm just about ready to put the brakes on Warsaw. Call it off. I mean it."

"Can't do that, Jake, and you know it," Marshall said coolly. "The vice president has given the go-ahead. Things are moving forward and everyone knows it. We pull it back now we show major weakness, not only with our people but with our friends in France and Germany. So relax, we're the ones in control. As I said before, have a little faith."

Suddenly there was a scurry of activity at the command post. Bill Strait was standing up, talking animatedly into his headset. The others had stopped to watch him, Captain Diaz included. Lowe and Marshall started toward them on the run.

"Repeat that please," Bill Strait said, his hand to his headset trying to hear clearly while still monitoring the tense communication between his own teams using other broadcast channels. "Good! Damn good!"

"What is it?" Lowe asked quickly as he and Marshall came up. "Your tech guys hear something? Pick up sounds? Is it him? POTUS?"

"Not yet, sir. A CNP team has broken into the main tunnel this side of an underground landslide near the monastery. CIA unit is going in now."

"Agent Strait," Captain Diaz pulled off her headset. "Our team at this end," she nodded toward the lighted work area in the distance, "has just cut through. Six men are on the floor." Abruptly she looked to Marshall and Lowe.

"The old maps gave us a tunnel length of approximately twelve miles. That length is now proving correct, which means the maps are reasonably accurate. A team somewhere near the halfway point has located a chimney and is working down it. Another team is working through a fissure toward one of the side tunnels. Drilling units seven and four have reached soft stone three miles apart. How long it will take them to get into the main shaft we can't know. For the teams that are already inside and those to come afterward everything depends on what they find there. If it's open all the way or if rock falls or landslides block the way."

Lowe looked to Bill Strait. "How many men do we have in the tunnels now?"

"About sixty. Another thirty or so when the other teams crack through. That many more when the rest of Captain Diaz's team and our ops hit the tunnel floor over there. The CIA ops from Madrid are on the ground now and have been assigned coordinates along the top of the main shaft. Agentes Rurales teams who know the area are assisting them to find other ways in. Satellite coverage for digital visual photographic and thermal imaging won't happen for another ninety minutes until the satellite is overhead. With the night and this weather we're not going to get much if anything from the visual imaging. It's the thermal imaging, the heat signature coming from bodies on the ground or exiting the shafts, we will be looking to recognize."

Lowe was openly upset and raising his voice. "So basically this whole operation is at the mercy of a few drilling machines and several hundred men with microphones, night goggles, and picks and shovels."

"I'm afraid we're in a hot pursuit situation here, sir. You run with what you have, lots of bodies and old-world technology."

"Where the hell are those hundred more Secret Service people coming from Paris?"

Strait looked from Lowe to Marshall. "On Spanish soil now. Wheels down here at new ETA 9:40. Gentlemen, every team here is professional, CNP, CIA, USSS. If the president is down there he will be found."

"I'm sure he will. And thank you," Marshall said, then took Lowe by the arm, and they walked off toward the Chinook.

"You're pushing it, Jake," he said firmly. "Take it easy, huh? Just take it easy."

116

• THE AMPHITHEATER OF LA IGLESIA

DENTRODE LA MONTAÑA, THE CHURCH WITHIN

THE MOUNTAIN, 9:20 P.M.

Demi stood at the edge of the crowd, as unobtrusively as possible photographing the ceremony taking place in the Aldebaran circle where the sixty monks knelt at its outer edge, heads bowed, chanting in the same indecipherable language as before. Behind them the three bonfires still roared, their embers drifting up into an eerie night sky; the full moon all but lost in the clouds of an approaching storm that announced its ferocity with a spectacular lightning show over the distant valley.

Her white dress flowing around her, Cristina sat like a goddess on a simple wooden throne in the circle's center as, one by one, scarlet-gowned children came to her from the darkness beyond the bonfires, each waiting his or her turn and then slowly and reverently walking into the firelight to approach her. Each child carried something live, a dog or cat or, in the case of several of the older children, an owl, leashed and tethered to a leather arm gauntlet like a falcon, for blessing.

And bless them Cristina did, smiling compassionately and lovingly to each, then saying something unheard and kissing them on one check and then the other, and afterward passing her hand over the creature they had brought, reciting some kind of short prayer as she did. Her words, barely audible, spoken in the same language used by the monks and by Beck and Luciana. Afterward the child moved off, drifting into the darkness beyond the bonfires and the next took its place. All around the adults watched, silent and spellbound, while below, at the edge of the firelight, Luciana and the Reverend Beck stood witness, as if divine shepherds overseeing their flock.

Demi was utterly perplexed. She wondered how the sign of Aldebaran on her mother's drawing, the Aldebaran thumb tattoos on Merriman Foxx, the late Dr. Lorraine Stephenson, Cristina, Luciana, and probably Reverend Beck, fit with all this. Especially this simple touching children's ceremony that blessed dogs and cats and owls. What spirits had Beck been calling forth from the night? What role did Cristina play? What was the significance of any of it?

Maybe it was, as Beck had said, that the coven and its rituals were harmless and there was nothing that couldn't be shown to the world. If so why had she been drugged for her journey here? What had Foxx wanted with Nicholas Marten that involved any of this? What of her mother's disappearance? Her father's warning? Or that given her by the armless Giacomo Gela? And what had he witnessed so many years ago that caused his captors to so heinously mutilate him? Moreover what was the connection of the sign of Aldebaran to the centuries-old cult of Aradia Minor and its traditions: blood oaths, sacrifices of living creatures, human torture? Where was its several-hundred-member audience, the powerful order called the Unknowns?

Had Gela been wrong or even crazy, a bitter armless octogenarian living alone for decades who had fabricated a secret, ancient culture upon which to blame his own condition? Demi saw no sign of any of it. Just families and children and animals. What was here to be feared?

117

• 9:35 P.M.

Hector and José were already on the tunnel floor, their flashlights pointed upward. Fifty feet above them Amado worked in a tight, sharply sloping chimney helping Miguel ease Hap down, his arm, by necessity, taken from its makeshift sling. The constant throbbing in his wounded shoulder eased somewhat by a pain pill reluctantly taken.

• 9:40 P.M.

The three were still twenty feet above the tunnel floor when they felt the earth begin to shake. Seconds later they heard it. One, two, three, four, and then five. The thundering chop of helicopters coming in and passing overhead at a low level.

Miguel looked at Hap. "More police? CIA?"

"Secret Service," Hap said coldly. "Flown in from Paris."

"How do you know?"

"Because it's my damn job to know!" Hap flared. It was the last thing they needed, more bodies working against them, agents thinking they were helping when they were doing just the opposite. "I would have called them in myself." He looked at Amado below him, "How much further?"

"Not much," Miguel said, then grinned. "The drop is still enough to kill you."

"Next time bring a ladder."

• 9:43 P.M.

"Laser!" Marten said in a hoarse whisper, pulling the president back against the tunnel wall in the inky black.

"Where?"

"Ahead."

"I didn't see it."

"It went on, then off. Either a mistake or they were hoping to get lucky. The last thing they want to do is give themselves away."

"Listen."

Once again came the sound of a drill cutting through stone.

"It's closer," the president's voice was little more than a whisper.

"A second rig?"

Abruptly the sound came again. This one closer than the other.

"And a third."

"They're in front of us with lasers," Marten said. "How far away or how many, we don't know. They're closing in behind us. And then there was that sound before. Like rocks slapped together. What the hell that was, I don't know either."

Suddenly the president raised what was left of the torch. Little more than a glowing ember. He lifted it high and close to Marten's face so that he could see him clearly. "You gave me your word that we would get out of here and that I would address the convention at Aragon. Damn it to hell, we are not going to let them take us now. I'm holding you to your promise."

"Mr. President, take that damn stick out of my face," Marten glared at him.

President Harris stared, then lowered the glowing pick handle. "I'm sorry."

Suddenly there was another flash of laser through the tunnel. Then a second, held longer this time. They could hear the distant echo of footsteps, men moving quickly along the tunnel toward them. From behind came another screech of drill. It held for ten seconds, then its pitch suddenly rose. Immediately the whine diminished.

"They've broken through," the president said.

"Give me that," Marten said quickly, and grabbed the glowing torch, then started back the way they had come.

"What are you doing?"

"Looking for help, Cousin. Looking for help."

• 9:45 P.M.

Marten ran along the track as fast as he dared in the dark, the glowing pick handle held near the tunnel floor, the president on his heels. Then the president caught up.

"Fifty, a hundred yards back, the torch flared." Marten kept moving, his voice barely a whisper. "Just a little. Not enough to think about at the time but there was an air current of some sort. Maybe a crack in the wall big enough we can squeeze into until those laser guys pass, then we go back the way they came, the way we were headed. If they got in, there's a way out."

Behind them a shot of laser light bounced off the tunnel walls. Now they could hear the echo of voices in front of them. Marten ran on another twenty yards, then slowed. "Somewhere here," he stopped and ran the glowing stick along the tunnel floor and then up the walls.

Nothing.

Another shot of laser bounced off the tunnel ceiling behind them. From the darkness in front came the steady drum of running feet.

"Come on," the president breathed.

"Nothing. Maybe I was wrong."

Marten started to move on when suddenly the torch flared up.

"There! You found it!" the president said.

Marten twisted back and pushed the brand toward the wall. The flame rose higher. Then they saw it. A small, three foot square opening in the tunnel wall just where it met the floor and all but obscured by the wooden ties of the ore-car tracks.

Marten moved closer. The flame rose higher still.

Another blast of laser came from behind them. This time it held longer, lighting up the entire shaft a half mile back. The sound of men running toward them from the other direction became more distinct.

"Get in," Marten commanded. The president dropped to all fours and squeezed into the cutout. A heartbeat later Marten followed. Like that they were gone. The tunnel where they had been, black as coal. As if they were never there.

118

• 9:50 P.M.

Marten and the president pushed farther back into the cutout. One shoved breathlessly up against the other. Two full-size men crammed like rag dolls into an impossibly tiny space.

They could hear the rush of feet approaching in the tunnel outside. The sound got louder, then louder still. Then the men were just outside the opening only inches away. In another instant they were past it. There had easily been twenty, maybe more. Within the next minute they would come full on the force coming toward them from the opposite direction. They would confer for precious brief seconds, then each head back the way they had come. Checking and double-checking the route they had so swiftly passed through.

"Move! Now!" the president whispered, and started to shove out toward the tunnel.

"No." Marten pulled him back. "If there are more still coming we'll walk right into them."

"What do we do?"

"Wait."

"We don't have time. They'll turn back in a second when they run into the other squad. We have to take the chance and go now."

"Alright." Marten started to move, then suddenly stopped as the glow on the near-dead brand flared again. "Hold it," he moved the glowing pick handle to the side of the cutout. The glow became brighter. He blew on it and got a flame, then raised the torch and looked around.

"This place has been made with a different kind of tool than was used to dig the main tunnel. And it wasn't done eighty years ago either."

The president perked and followed the torch as Marten moved it around. "It's an air-transfer duct."

"Why? And from where to here?"

"Hand me the torch."

Marten did. The president turned up on an elbow and crawled farther back into the cutout.

"What do you see?"

"There's a steel vent, maybe two by three. It drops straight down into what looks like another shaft underneath."

"Can we fit through the vent?" Marten asked.

There was sudden noise in the tunnel outside. They heard the oncoming rush of feet, the snap of orders being given. The search team was coming back fast.

"We don't have a choice."

• 9:55 P.M.

The wind was rising, the heavy clouds beginning to spit rain, as an increasingly anxious Jake Lowe turned up the collar of his parka and pushed past Spanish police hastily erecting a protective tent over the command post. He reached the control area and moved in to look over the shoulders of Bill Strait and Captain Diaz.

For the last minutes he had been standing back, watching the communications teams monitor exchanges between the CIA, Secret Service, and CNP units in the tunnels and their counterparts scattered over the rock formations above. More than once he'd looked over at Jim Marshall, huddled to the side, chatting and drinking coffee with the presidential medical team waiting for the word that would put them into action. But that word had not come. Nothing seemed to be happening. A sudden shared laugh by Marshall and the medical crew pushed him over and sent him moving toward Strait and Diaz.

Was he the only one who was concerned about what would happen if the president suddenly turned up alive and well and talking and refusing to be taken to the CIA jet? Not only would Warsaw and their entire plan for the Middle East be dead in the water, they-all of them, from the vice president on down-ran the very real risk of being arrested and tried for attempting to overthrow the government. The penalty if convicted was death.

"What the hell's going on down there?" he suddenly asked Bill Strait. But it wasn't a question as much as it was a demand, even an accusation.

For a moment Strait ignored him. Finally he turned. "Five teams are inside the main shaft," he said patiently. "Three more are searching side tunnels. The rest are on standby for relief duty. The team working this end just met up with the unit that broke in midpoint the other way. All they found was a lot of dark tunnel. They've called for lights and are retracing now."

"What about the satellite? Where is it?"

"Another forty minutes until it's overhead, sir," Strait glanced at Marshall as if he wished he'd take Lowe aside and away. "The satellite, the thermal imaging, is not an end-all. It will not show us what's going on underground."

"When are we going to know what's going on underground?" Lowe pushed him hard.

"I can't tell you that, sir. There's a lot of area down there."

"In the next ten minutes or the next ten hours?"

"We are in the tunnels, sir. The Secret Service, the CIA, the CNP."

"I know who the hell is down there."

"Maybe you would like to go down yourself, sir."

Lowe flared at the insubordination. "Maybe you'd like to find yourself shoveling shit in Oklahoma."

Suddenly Marshall stepped in and turned Lowe away. "Jake, everybody's a little strung out here. There's enough tension as it is. I told you before to relax, do it. It would be good for everyone."

Strait's hand suddenly went to his headset, "What? Where? How many?"

Diaz looked at him. So did the medical team. Lowe and Marshall turned back fast.

"Go over the entire area again. We're sending in the standby teams. Lights are on the way, yes."

"What the hell is it?" Lowe was right in his face.

"They found fragments of what looks like a recently burned undershirt. Like somebody was using it as a torch. There are what appear to be rather unclear footprints of two men. They lead back through the tunnel."

"Two?"

"Yes, sir, two."

119

• 10:05 P.M.

The tunnel was little more than the height of a man standing and about twice that wide and was dimly lit by battery-powered emergency lights mounted high on the tunnel walls every hundred feet or so. Wood timbers bolstered the walls and ceiling that had, between large pieces of natural stone, been sprayed with a thin cement coating, probably to keep the dust down. The steel track down the center was a single, shiny monorail that led, like the tunnel itself, into the murky distance in either direction.

"We wanted to know how Foxx got the bodies in and out of his lab," the president said quietly, "here it is."

Marten took a moment to get his bearings then looked down the shaft to his left, "As far as I can tell, that way leads back toward Foxx's lab." He looked right. "That has to be the direction where they came from. The bodies loaded on a monorail sled or something."

"Then that's the way we go," the president was already moving in that direction. "This tunnel was dug directly beneath the other so it couldn't be read by satellites or surveillance aircraft. Everyone knew of the old tunnels, so no one would suspect they were being used as cover for something else. This is all Foxx's design. I'll bet copied from the secret underground weapons factories that armed Germany for World War Two."

"It's well-engineered alright," Marten was looking up. "It wasn't just chance we found that vent, there are a lot more at this end at least, probably one every two hundred feet. We missed them because they're well-hidden but soon enough those guys will find them too."

"Something else," the president kept moving. "Gas jets mounted near the emergency lights. Bigger than the ones in the lab, much bigger. Maybe five or six inches. Why this whole place didn't go up with the first blast I don't know."

"You make it sound like we're walking on the inside of a bomb."

"We are."

120

• 10:12 P.M.

The monks' chant echoed powerfully across the amphitheater. The moon had disappeared, replaced by steady rain and a show of lightning against the mountains that was accentuated every now and then by enormous claps of thunder. But the storm and its elements were incidental to what Demi saw before her, that held her frozen where she was.

A great live ox stood tethered by chains in the center of the Aldebaran circle. The chanting monks had formed a ring just outside it and were slowly moving counterclockwise around it as one by one the children came from the dark beyond the still fiercely burning bonfires to reverently place bouquets of flowers at the animal's feet. When the children were done, their elders came. More than a hundred of them, one by one in prayerful silence, to lay still more bouquets before the ox.

What astonished and held Demi's unwavering attention was that the animal stood in the center of a roaring fire. Yet it was seemingly at peace, unafraid, and either unfeeling of the intense heat and flame or unaware of what was happening to it.

"It is neither a trick nor magic," a voice behind her said gently. Demi whirled to see Luciana behind her. "The beast is on a spiritual journey. It feels no pain, only joy." Luciana smiled assuredly. "Go on, walk closer, go near. Photograph it. That's why you have come, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Then do it. Record it for all time. Especially its eyes. Record the peace, the joy all creatures feel when they take the journey. Do it and you will see."

Luciana swept an arm toward the spectacle, and Demi went. Gathering her cameras, she stepped through the ring of monks and moved toward the burning beast. As she did, an elderly woman moved in to lay spring flowers at the animal's feet and to say a brief prayer in the same language the monks were chanting.

Demi used the digital camera first, the one that would instantly transmit the images to her Web site in Paris. She took a wide shot first, then zoomed closer for another. Finally she moved in full on the beast's head. She felt the tremendous intensity of the fire, saw the heat waves through the lens. Again she heard Luciana's words:

Record it for all time. Especially its eyes. Record the peace, the joy all creatures feel when they take the journey. Do it and you will see.

Luciana was right. What Demi saw in the eyes of the ox, what the camera recorded, was a look of exceeding peace and, if indeed animals did experience it, joy.

Suddenly the flames roared up and the ox disappeared from her view. She stepped back quickly. An instant later the animal's enormous body collapsed into the fire, sending a massive shower of sparks skyward into the night. At that moment the chanting stopped and everything went silent. All around her people had bowed their heads.

The beast's great journey had begun.

121

• 10:24 P.M.

Marten and President Harris were half running, half walking, purposely staying on the monorail's wooden ties, trying desperately to leave no footprints, no sign they had been there, nothing to follow. That the president had a good thirty years on Marten made little difference. Both men were sweating and exhausted, running on little more than fumes. Their mental and physical state made all the worse by the certainty that it was only a matter of time, minutes, even seconds, before their pursuers found one or more of the vents that would lead them down to the shaft where they were now.

The best they could do was trust they would reach the end of the tunnel before that happened, and when they did they'd have enough time to find a way out through whatever entryway Foxx had used to bring his victims to the holding tanks. Yet hopeful as that idea was, it brought up something else. What if that area, whatever it was, was still active? What if there were guards? Or others of Foxx's crew? It was a thought that chilled but at this point could make no difference. They had only one way to go and that was straight ahead.

• 10:27 P.M.

National Security Adviser Marshall was tucked in the back of the Chinook making notes on his laptop when the helicopter's door slid open and Jake Lowe came in soaking wet from the rain. Up front the helicopter crew dozed in the cockpit. Halfway down, the medical team played cards. All the while Bill Strait's ongoing communication with the search teams working underground crackled incessantly over the speaker system.

Lowe walked directly to Marshall, "I need to talk to you," he said. "Alone."

Thirty seconds later they stepped out of the Chinook's warmth and light and into the dark and rain. Lowe slid the door closed behind them. Marshall flipped up the hood of his parka.

"Treason," Lowe said fearfully, and jabbed a finger in the direction of the mountains lit by intermittent flashes of lightning. "He gets out of those tunnels alive. He talks and people start to believe him. The same thing Hap said not long after all this started-what happens when he shows up? And where the hell is Hap anyway?" Lowe kept on. "Was he really shot? Is he dead? Or is he out there somewhere knowing what the hell's going on and doing something about it?"

Marshall studied him. What he saw was a mentally fatigued, increasingly upset Lowe finally beginning to lose it.

"Let's walk," Marshall said, and started off in the rain, heading them across a rocky flat and away from the Chinook's light spill. "Jake, you're tired," he said after a time. Paranoid was the word he wanted to use but didn't.

"We're all tired," Lowe shot back. "What the hell's the difference? The thing is we have to call Warsaw off. Right now. Before it gets to where it can't be called off. We do that and he comes out of those tunnels talking, accusing us, warning the French and Germans about it. Then nothing happens. It makes him a loony, gone over the edge, the way we've played it all along. But if the killings take place, we're all waiting for the hangman. And it won't be just for treason either. There are other things they can come after us with, especially when they find out about Foxx and what he was doing. The kind of things that came out of the Nuremberg trials. War crimes: performing medical experiments without the subjects' consent. Conspiracy to commit war crimes. Crimes against humanity."

They walked farther into the storm. "I thought we talked about that, Jake," Marshall's tone was even, wholly without emotion. "Calling it off. We can't do it. Too many things are already in motion."

The rain came down harder. Lightning danced across the nearby peaks. Lowe was unwavering.

"You don't understand any of what I'm saying, do you? He's still the goddam president. He comes out of those tunnels alive and talking and the assassinations take place? For chrissakes listen to me! The vice president has to withdraw his order. Now, tonight! We don't, we lose everything!"

They were a hundred yards from the Chinook. The same distance to their left was the glow of the command post.

"You really think he's coming out alive and we can't handle it?"

"That's right, I think he's coming out alive and we can't handle it. We're not prepared to handle it. This is a situation no one ever considered."

Just then a huge lightning flash lit up the countryside for miles around. For an instant everything was as bright as midday. They could see the rugged terrain, the Chinook, the hastily put-up tent housing the command post, the steep canyons that fell sharply away from the path they were on. Then the dark came again and with it a deafening clap of thunder.

Marshall took Lowe by the arm. "Watch your step. This is a narrow trail, you don't want to go over the side."

Lowe took Marshall's hand away. "Damn it, you're still not listening!"

"I am listening, Jake, and I believe you're right," Marshall was calm and thoughtful. "We were never prepared for anything like this, none of us. Maybe the risk is too great. We can't chance blowing the whole thing, not this far into it." Another lightning flash and Marshall's eyes found Lowe's. "Okay, Jake. Let's make the call. Tell them what we think. Have the vice president withdraw the order. Put it on hold."

"That's good," Lowe said with immense relief. "Damn, damn good."

122

• 10:37 P.M.

"No! No!" José suddenly pulled back in the narrow chimney and refused to go farther.

"What the hell's wrong?" Hap looked sharply to Miguel.

They were probably four hundred feet underground in an awkwardly twisting limestone channel that dropped sharply downward into a claustrophobic darkness that, even with the illumination of their flashlights, had become increasingly disquieting. Moreover, this was a second chimney down, one far beneath the first one they had descended through, and all of them, the boys included, were becoming more and more on edge.

"Tell him it's okay, we understand," Hap was pale, his shoulder throbbing, already into a second pain pill. "Tell him we all feel the same way. But we have to keep going."

Miguel started to speak to José in Spanish. He'd barely started when the youngster shook his head again. "No!" he spat. "No más!" No more!

Nearly forty minutes earlier they had reached the section of tunnel where the boys thought Miguel's friends might be, if they were there at all, Amado and Hector getting to it first and the others soon afterward. They'd hardly gone a hundred yards when they heard the rush of men coming toward them in the dark. Miguel started to turn them back when Hector took him by the arm.

"No, this way," he said quickly and led them dangerously forward toward the oncoming men to another break in the rock, a fissure that even with lights would be almost impossible to find unless one knew the tunnel very well. It was steep and narrow and led farther down in an abrupt, twisting sweep deeper into the earth. They had climbed down it for a full thirty seconds when they heard the rescuers pass by its hidden opening and stopped. And it was there they remained, all but trapped as still more forces joined the others above. Finally Amado had looked to his uncle.

"These are more than just 'friends' who are lost."

"Yes," Miguel glanced at Hap and then back to his nephew. "One of them is an official of the United States government."

"And these men, these police forces hunting him, want to do him harm."

"They think they are helping him but they are not. When they find him they will bring him to people who will harm him, but they don't know that."

"Who is this man?" Hector asked.

Hap had trusted them so far and right now he needed all the help and trust he could get. "The president," he said definitively.

"Of the United States?" Amado blurted in broken English.

"Yes."

The boys laughed as if it were a joke and then they saw the expressions on the faces of the men.

"It is true?" Amado asked.

"Yes, it's true," Hap said. "We have to get him out and away from here without anyone knowing."

Miguel translated the last into Spanish then added, "The man who is with him is good, the president's friend. It is up to us to find them and get them away from the police and to safety. Do you understand?"

"Sí," each boy said. "Sí."

It was then Hap glanced at his watch and looked to Miguel. "Before, the boys said they thought they knew about how far the president might have come since the landslide. That was two and half hours ago. They know the tunnel. Where do they think he and Marten might be now, assuming they're still alive and moving at about the same speed?"

Miguel looked at the boys and translated.

The boys looked at each other, had a brief discussion, then Amado looked to his uncle. "Cerca," he said. "Cerca."

"Near," Miguel translated. "Near."

It was then they heard the movement and voices of the men in the tunnel above. They had come back and were much closer, their voices echoing clearly down to where they were. Miguel was afraid they would be discovered, and Hector moved them farther down, inching them along through a chimney that turned and twisted like the coils of a snake. Less than five minutes later José had stopped them with his sudden "No!" Refusing to go any farther.

"What is it?" Miguel asked him in Spanish.

"Los muertos"-the dead-he said, as if only seconds before he had realized where he was and where this chimney led, and it rocked him to his soul. "Los muertos," he repeated, clearly terrified. "Los muertos."

Hap looked to Miguel. "What is he talking about?"

A brief exchange in Spanish followed. Miguel to José, who remained silent, then to Amado, whom he finally got the truth out of.

"Down there," Miguel gestured farther down the chimney, "is another tunnel. It has a single track. Traveling along it he has seen a 'streetcar' filled with the dead."

"What?" Hap was incredulous.

"More than once."

"What is he talking about?"

Miguel and Amado had an exchange in Spanish. Then Miguel translated.

"A few months ago José and Hector were exploring and found another tunnel, the one he is talking about that is below us now. It's much smaller and newer and sprayed with a cement coating. A single steel track runs down the center of it. There was a hole at the top of the tunnel. It is how they saw into the shaft and where they were looking when the streetcar-kind-of machine came along. Dead bodies were stacked on it like firewood. They got scared and climbed out and told no one what they saw. Two months later they dared each other to come back. They climbed down and waited and then saw it again. This time bodies were being taken in the other direction. José became certain that if he ever went down there again he would become one of them. He believes it is Hell."

For a moment Hap stared unbelieving, trying to digest it. Then he asked a simple question. "Is there a way, besides this chimney, to get from that tunnel up there," he pointed to where they had been, "down to the tunnel where the bodies were?"

Once again Miguel turned to the boys and translated. For a moment no one said anything; finally Hector spoke, scratching two lines in the stone with a piece of rock as he did. Miguel translated what he said.

"The shaft below runs level. The shaft above starts high then slopes lower. Where we are it is maybe sixty feet between them. Much further down it is less than twenty and there are cutouts all along it, he thinks for air, so yes it is possible to get from one to the other."

Hap listened carefully to Miguel's translation. As he did he heard more noise from above. Suddenly the hair stood up on his neck.

"There are a lot people still up there," he said with urgency. "Dead or alive, if the president was in that tunnel they would have found him by now and we would have either heard their reaction or they simply would have gone."

Suddenly Miguel realized what he was saying. "You think my cousins are in the lower shaft!"

"Maybe, and maybe close by. Let José stay here if he wants, the rest of us are going down to find out."

123

• 10:44 P.M.

We've got direct overhead satellite coverage now, sir." A young Secret Service tech specialist was looking over his computer screen at Bill Strait. "Very clear thermal picture of our movements aboveground, sir. So far there is nothing else."

"Bill," Strait looked up as Jim Marshall suddenly came into the command post, pulling the hood back from his parka. He was soaked through and pale as death.

"What is it?" Strait said.

"Jake and I were out on a trail in the dark. We were talking. He was still upset. He lost his footing and slipped. I tried to grab him but it was too late. I heard him land. He fell a long way. My God, he's got to be dead!"

"Oh good Lord!"

"Bill, you've got to get some people down there fast. Alive or dead we have to get him out. We can't have people asking what he was doing up here. The accident will have to have happened somewhere else, probably the location where we're supposed to have the president. He was out walking alone after a meeting and slipped and fell."

"I understand, sir. I'll take care of it."

"I want to inform the vice president right away. I'll want a secure phone," he glanced around at the closeness of the others, "and privacy."

"Yes, sir. Of course, sir."

124

• 10:49 P.M.

The monorail track followed a long bend in the tunnel. Marten turned to look back as they started around it. It was their last straight view of the tunnel behind. If their pursuers had found the shaft, so far there was no sign of them.

"How much farther can this thing go?" he said as he caught up to the president.

"It doesn't," President Harris was staring straight ahead. Fifty yards in front of them the tunnel ended abruptly at a massive steel door.

"Now what?" Marten said.

"Don't know."

They covered the distance to the door quickly and in silence. The monorail track passed through it at ground level, a cutout precisely machined to accommodate it. The door itself was fitted to geared, machined rails on either side, making it obvious that the door opened by rising straight up.

"It's got to weigh five tons," the president said. "There's no way we're going to open it by hand."

"There," Marten said and indicated a small red light mounted in the door itself just above eye level. "It's an infrared sensor, like the remote on a TV. Suddenly he pulled Foxx's BlackBerry-like device from his jacket, then stepped in front of the sensor and pressed what appeared to be the POWER key. A light came on. He looked at the panel. Among its array of buttons was one marked SEND. He pointed it at the sensor and pressed it. Nothing happened.

• 10:54 P.M.

"There's got to be an entry code of some kind," Marten said, working one combination of the number/letter keys and then another. Finally he tried devising patterns using a grouping of nine keys with raised symbol-like figures that were mounted on the gadget's lower half. Still nothing happened.

"We have to go back down the tunnel," the president said. "It's not going to work!"

"To where?"

"Foxx was a military man. He wouldn't have built something like this without giving himself a way out if things went wrong. Somewhere along the way he would have created an emergency exit, probably more than one."

"We saw nothing."

"Then we missed it, Mr. Marten. We simply missed it."

• 10:57 P.M.

The president and Marten rounded the long turn in the tunnel going back the way they had come. Each man studying the ceiling and the side of shaft closest to him, looking for an area in the cemented tunnel wall that might have been cut out and then replaced.

Then Marten saw it. Maybe a half mile down in the dark of the tunnel. The briefest flash as an emergency light glinted off steel.

"They're coming!" he said quickly.

Both men froze, staring down the shaft in front of them. A split second later they heard the distant sound of men running toward them.

"The vents!" the president said suddenly. "The way we came down. They'll get us back up into the other tunnel!"

• 10:58 P.M.

They reached the bend in the tunnel and cleared it on the run, trying to get out of the line of sight and at the same time looking for the air vents above where the tunnel wall met the ceiling.

"I don't see them," Marten cried out.

"They've got to be here. We've seen them the whole way alo-" The president's words were cut off by a loud splintering crack in the tunnel roof just ahead. A split second later there was a sharp cry and the body of a young man crashed through it to land on the tunnel floor not twenty feet in front of them.

"What the hell!" Marten yelled.

• 10:59 P.M.

Hector was picking himself up as they reached him.

"Don't think he's a cop," Marten said quickly and glanced down the tunnel behind them.

"He's not American either!" The president looked up at the shattered dark hole in the tunnel ceiling where Hector had fallen through. "If he came down, there's a way up!"

"Cousins!" Miguel's joyous face suddenly appeared in the hole.

"Miguel!" The president was incredulous.

"Miguel," Marten jumped on it, "there are fifty guys right behind us!"

"Tell Hector to boost them up," a second voice barked from the darkness, then Hap Daniels moved into view. He wasn't looking at Marten or the president, he was staring at Miguel. "Now! Dammit! Fast!"

• 11:00 P.M.

The president came up first, then Marten, then Hector.

• 11:01 P.M.

They could hear the men coming.

"They'll see the hole," Miguel spat.

"They know we're here somewhere," the president said. "We had to burn Marten's undershirt for light. They'll have found it."

"Where?" Hap said.

"In the upper tunnel."

Abruptly Hap handed the president his flashlight. "You and Marten, get up the chimney and fast. It's steep and full of tight spots but you can make it. We're right behind you."

The president hesitated.

"Now!" Hap commanded, and president and Marten started up.

Immediately Hap looked to Miguel. "We're going to have to give them the boys."

"What?"

"Amado and Hector. They were exploring the tunnels. Their flashlight went dead. It was pitch black. They got scared and decided to burn Amado's undershirt to see their way. It finally went out. They got lost again. Flashlight lost somewhere too. They wandered around, found this tunnel, then the hole here. Broke it open and were about to start up. If those guys are looking for two men, there they are."

Miguel hesitated. This was crazy. Amado was his nephew. He couldn't do it.

"Miguel, tell them now! And tell them to delay whoever gets them for as long as they can. Cry. Beg. Scream with relief. Be afraid their mothers will kill them if they find out. Anything. We've got to have time to get the president away from here."

125

• 11:10 P.M.

Demi crossed the church floor in the darkness. Cameras over her shoulder, she used a lone candle to light her way as she moved from ancient paving stone to ancient paving stone, looking at the family names carved into them. Stones, Cristina had told her, that marked family tombs and held the earthly remains of the honored dead.

Outside, the storm was abating; the thunder and lightning were fading in the distance, the rain had become little more than a drizzle. Inside, the church was silent; the families, the monks, Cristina, Luciana, and Reverend Beck long gone to their quarters. Demi had done the same, gone to change back into her street clothes and bide her time, waiting until she felt it was safe to leave her room and make her way undisturbed to the church nave.

CORNACCHI, GUARNIERI, BENICHI.

She read the names on the tombs and moved on.

RIZZO, CONTI, VALLONE.

She moved farther across the floor.

MAZZETTI, GHINI.

"The name you are looking for is Ferrara," a voice came from the darkness.

Demi started and lifted her candle to peer into the darkness. "Who's there?"

For a moment she saw nothing and then Luciana stepped into the light offered by the candle. A hooded monk was with her. Luciana no longer wore the gold dress of earlier. Instead, she was dressed in a black robe similar to those of the monks. Her false, hideously long nails were gone, but her dark eye makeup with the searing dramatic streaks that ran daggerlike from the corners of her eyes to the hollows of her ears remained. The effect of it all, the black robe, the makeup, her sudden presence here in the dark of the church in the company of a lone monk was, at best, unnerving.

"Come," she waved a hand, "the tomb is over here."

FERRARA.

"Move your candle closer, so you can see the name clearly."

Demi did.

"Say it. Say the name," Luciana insisted.

"Ferrara," Demi said.

"Your mother's name. Your family name."

"How do you know?" Demi said, startled by the revelation.

"It is why you are here. Why you befriended Reverend Beck and then Dr. Foxx. You wanted to know the secrets of Aldebaran. Why you met with the unfortunate Giacomo Gela, who then told you of Aradia Minor."

Demi moved the candle closer to Luciana and the monk. "I want to know what happened to my mother." She should have been afraid, but she wasn't. This was about the fate of her mother and nothing else.

Luciana smiled, "Show her."

The monk took the candle from Demi, then knelt beside the marking stone and removed it. Beneath was an ancient bronze chest. Twenty-seven dates were engraved on its lid. The earliest was 1637, the last was exactly eighteen years ago. The year her mother vanished.

"Your mother's name was Teresa," Luciana said.

"Yes."

"Remove the closure," Luciana said quietly.

The monk turned back the cover of the chest, then held the candle close. Demi could see rows of silver urns. Each one set into a special bronze square, each with a date engraved on it.

"The ashes of the honored dead. Like the great ox tonight. Like Cristina tomorrow."

"Cristina?" Demi was jolted.

"Tonight the children honored her as they honored the ox. She is joyous. As is her family. As are the children and the others."

"What are you telling me?" Slowly Demi's defiance began to fade. In its place came fear.

"The ritual was to honor those about to begin the great journey."

"These were honored?" Demi looked back to the urns.

"Yes."

"My mother?"

"Yes."

"These other urns are all women of my family?" Demi didn't understand.

"Count them."

Demi did, and then looked up. "There are twenty-eight. But only twenty-seven dates are engraved on the cover."

"Look at the date on the last urn."

"Why?"

"Look at it."

Demi did as Luciana commanded. When she did puzzlement crossed her face.

"Tomorrow."

"It is a date not yet engraved on the chest because as yet the urn holds no ashes," Luciana smiled slowly, her eyes filling with an immense darkness. "There is one woman in your family not yet counted."

"Who?"

"You."

126

• 11:30 P.M.

National Security Adviser James Marshall sat at a small folding table in the back of the command post tent. He was alone, isolated for privacy as he had asked, his headset connected to a secure phone.

On the same secure line were Vice President Hamilton Rogers; President John Henry Harris's chief of staff, Tom Curran; Secretary of State David Chaplin; Secretary of Defense Terrence Langdon; and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Chester Keaton, now aboard a CIA jet en route to Madrid.

"They caught two local boys supposedly lost in the tunnels. Still no sign of the president or Marten. The boys are being brought here for interrogation now. Nobody's really sure of what's going on." Marshall turned casually and looked around, making certain none of Bill Strait or Captain Diaz's communications team had wandered close by, then turned back and lowered his voice.

"We must assume what we have all along, that both men are either sealed in the tunnel outside Foxx's dirty lab, were in it when it exploded and are dead, or will be brought to me immediately if somehow they're found alive, then sedated and flown directly to a waiting CIA plane. If we do otherwise, we'll start thinking like Jake Lowe, and that's no good. There can be no weak links. None.

"I remind you there is a long and powerful history here, one we have long embraced and sworn allegiance to. This is not the first time its resolve has been tested. It will not be the last. Our charge from the beginning has been to ensure the success of the operation at hand. Nothing has changed. Are we clear on that, gentlemen?"

"Absolutely clear, Jim," Vice President Rogers said quietly. "Anyone disagree, say so now."

A unified silence followed.

"Good," the vice president said. "Chet, you have an exact on Warsaw?"

"Fail-safe at 1530 tomorrow." General Keaton had the same quiet, confident tone as the vice president.

"Good. Thank you, Dr. Marshall. You've handled it very well. Until tomorrow, gentlemen, good luck and Godspeed."

127

• 11:42 P.M.

The president, Marten, Hap, and Miguel huddled inside a dark turn of chimney thirty feet below where it met the upper tunnel.

Three times before they had stopped in the dark, breaths held, hearts pounding. The first had been when several of the rescuers had climbed into the chimney from below after Amado and Hector had been caught. They'd heard them talking as they came, arguing whether the boys were alone as they'd said and that there was no one else. They must have concluded they'd told the truth because they'd climbed only a few minutes longer before turning back. The second had been to rest and give the president and Marten water from Miguel's camel pack and two health bars each from the limousine's emergency kit. The third had been when they'd heard someone coming down from above. Hap had instantly pushed the president and Marten back behind them, and then he and Miguel had waited with guns in hand as whoever it was continued down. Then a flashlight beam appeared around a turn in the rock. Sig Sauer up, Hap had been about to identify himself when José appeared. He'd been listening for them and scrambled down to meet them when he heard them come.

"These are the Americans I told you about," Miguel said when they were face to face. José had stared for the briefest moment, then looked past them down the chimney and asked for Amado and Hector.

"They are helping," Miguel told him in Spanish.

"Helping where?"

"They are with the police."

"The police?"

"Yes," said Miguel in Spanish. "Now it's your turn; please lead us back up."

Ten minutes later they neared the top and Hap stopped them again, asking Miguel to send José the rest of the way to see if the upper tunnel was clear and if it was safe to go the hundred yards down it to the chimney they had initially come down through and that they would use to climb out.

That had been three minutes earlier. So far he hadn't come back.

Until they stopped here conversation between them had been brief utterings, mostly commands or warnings. All of it spoken in voices barely above a whisper.

As they waited, Miguel realized something had to be addressed and soon-Hap's fear that the president had been, and might still be, afraid to trust him. It was a subject he appointed himself to resolve.

Immediately he slid back and huddled close to the president. "Cousin," he said, "Hap appreciates that under the circumstances you had no way to know who you could trust, himself included. It was the same for him as he started to learn things. It was very difficult because he wasn't even sure he could trust his own brothers in the Secret Service. He even got shot because of it."

"Shot?"

"Two bullets in the shoulder at Foxx's monastery office when he went there looking for you. We got him a doctor but he still hurts like hell. He should be in bed but instead he climbed all over and through these damned mountains to find you. So don't ever think you can't trust him."

The president turned from Miguel and looked to Hap. "You never said a word about getting shot."

"Wasn't much to say."

"You got yourself into a real mess over me."

"It's my job description."

The president smiled. "Thank you."

"Yes, sir."

The president's response-the tease, the smile, the thank-you, was everything. It meant the bond, the friendship, and the hugely necessary trust between the president and his chief protector were once again in place.

"There's something you don't know, Hap," the president said and the personal moment faded. "The vice president, secretary of defense, chief of staff, all those people present that night at Evan Byrd's house in Madrid, are planning to have the president of France and the chancellor of Germany assassinated at the Warsaw meeting. It's part of a much bigger conspiracy, one that Merriman Foxx was involved in. There has been no way for me to alert anyone without giving away my position. And you can't do it either, not now."

Hap leaned forward, "It's not Monday yet, Mr. President. My plan is to get you out of here and then down the mountain as fast as we can, to Miguel's cousin's house where the limo is. Then we're gone, out of this hot surveillance area, hopefully as far as the French border by first light. At that point we can take the chance and inform the French and German governments about Warsaw. To do that we've got to deal with what comes next.

"When they break Hector and Amado, and they will," Hap glanced at Miguel. "We had to do something, Miguel, I'm sorry." He looked back to the president. "Once they break them, they'll know for certain you're down here and alive. It won't make any difference if they find out I'm with you or not. They'll come through all these tunnels loaded for bear. Outside will be the same. More bodies brought in, more equipment. In an hour there'll be a traffic jam of air and satellite surveillance like no one on this planet has ever seen. Every road for fifty miles around will be blocked."

"And you still think we can get out."

"We have a little time before they'll know for certain where you are and the full assault begins. Still," he cautioned, "there's a major force out there right now. The thing is, they're scattered all over and concentrating on what's going on underground. With care and luck and José knowing the way, in the dark we might have a chance to slip past them. Except for one thing."

"What do you mean?"

"By now they'll have a big surveillance satellite right over us. The digital-photo aspect won't be of much use at night, but the thermal imaging will. As soon as we're out of these tunnels and on the surface we become a heat source they will immediately identify."

"Then what makes you think we can get away at all?"

"It's more hope than think, Mr. President, but with these-" Hap pulled one of the small, folded survival blankets from his jacket-"open it up and you've got a thin blanket the size of a small tent. One side is Mylar, cut a couple of eyeholes, put it over your head and belt it around you, with luck it should reflect back 'cold' to the bird's thermal sensor. If we stay low to the ground and find brush and hillsides with trees to give us cover, we might just get away with it."

Miguel grinned. "You are a very smart fellow."

"Only if it works."

The president glanced at Marten and then looked to Miguel. "How far is the Aragon resort overland from where we are?"

"Ten, twelve miles. There are trails but mostly it's rough country."

"Can we reach it on foot by daybreak?"

"Maybe. José would know how to do it."

"The Aragon resort?" Hap was incredulous. "Over mountain trails in the dark. It would take four or five hours, maybe more. Even if these blankets do work, that's too much time. There will be too many people out there, too much equipment. The chances of us getting even halfway there without being caught don't exist."

"The other way's no better, Hap," the president said. "Those roads leading to the French border are all known and, as you said, will be blocked. If we get stopped out there we have no place to go at all and no matter what I say I'll soon be in the custody of my 'friends' and Warsaw will go on as planned. We go overland by foot in wild country and in the dark, we have at least some kind of chance.

"Moreover, Aragon is more than a refuge. As you well know I was to address the New World congregation at tomorrow's sunrise service, I still plan to. No one is going to take me away in front of all those people, especially a group like that. Once I tell them the truth, the situation at Warsaw will take care of itself."

"Mr. President, the security for that convention is huge. I know, I helped set it up. Even if we get that far, we wouldn't get past it. We try and everyone who wants you out of the way will know exactly where you are. They'll order security to get you out right then. You don't know this but the chief of staff has a CIA jet waiting at a private airstrip outside Barcelona. They get you on that plane, you're finished."

For a long moment the president said nothing and it was clear he was turning everything over in his mind; finally he looked to Hap. "We're going to try for Aragon. I know you don't like it but it's my decision. As for the security, you know the layout there-the land, the buildings, the church where I was to speak. You scouted it all in advance."

"Yes, sir."

"Then somehow we'll find a way in. I will be the surprise speaker as planned. And it will be a surprise, for everyone."

There was a noise from above and José eased around the corner. He looked to Miguel. "There are patrols," he said in Spanish, "but they have passed. I don't know if there are more. For the moment it is safe."

Miguel translated and the president looked to each man in turn-Marten, Hap, Miguel, and José.

"Let's go," he said.