The Machiavelli Covenant (10 page)

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

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

"Yes. Why?" he asked cautiously.

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

Marten was puzzled. "What about her?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You and she must have talked."

"A little."

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

"Maybe."

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

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

"Did she mention—?" Demi Picard hesitated.

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

"The"—she hesitated—"witches."

"Witches?"

"Yes."

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

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

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

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

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

"For what?" Marten was outraged.

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

"What the hell does that mean?"

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

"A ride where?"

"You'll find out."

•
BRITISH AIRWAYS FLIGHT 0224, WASHINGTON,
DULLES, TO HEATHROW, LONDON, 6:50 P.M.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

200 Triq San Gwann
Valletta,
Malta
Phone #: 243555

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

•
SPAIN, COSTA VASCA NUMBER 00204, NIGHT TRAIN,
SAN SEBASTIAN TO MADRID, 5:03 A.M.

"Victor?"

"Yes, Richard."

"Did I wake you?"

"No, I was expecting you to call."

"Where are you now?"

"We left Medina del Campo Station about a half hour ago. We are due to arrive in Madrid at seven thirty-five. Chamartin Station."

"When you get to Chamartin I want you to take the Metro to Atocha Station and from there a taxi to the Westin Palace Hotel on the Plaza de las Cortes. A room is reserved for you."

"Alright, Richard."

"One thing in particular. When you get to Atocha Station, I want you to walk through it carefully and look around. Atocha is where terrorist bombs placed on commuter trains killed one hundred and ninety-one people and injured nearly eighteen hundred more. Imagine what it would have been like when the bombs went off and what would have happened to all those people. And
if you were there maybe to you as well. Will you do that, Victor?"

"Yes, Richard."

"Do you have any questions?"

"No."

"Anything you need?"

"No."

"Get some rest. I'll call you later today."

There was a click as Richard signed off, and then Victor's cell phone went silent. For a long moment he did nothing, just listened to the sound of the train as it passed over the rails. Finally he looked around his first-class sleeping compartment with its little washstand, the fresh towels on a rack above him, fresh linens on the bunk bed. There had been only one other time in his life when he had traveled first-class, and that had been yesterday, when he'd taken the high-speed train, the TGV, from Paris to Hendaye on the French-Spanish border. Moreover, the Westin Palace in Madrid was a first-class hotel. As had been the Hotel Boulevard in Berlin. It seemed that from the moment he had shot and killed the man outside Union Station in Washington they had treated him with a great deal more respect than they had before.

He smiled warmly at the thought, then lay back against the soft bedding and closed his eyes. For the first time in as long as he could remember he felt truly appreciated. As if finally, his life had worth and meaning.

•
1:20 P.M.

President John Henry Harris sat in shirtsleeves watching the island of Corsica slide past beneath them, then saw the open water of the Balearic Sea as Air Force One flew west against a strong headwind toward the Spanish
mainland. After that it would be on to Madrid and a scheduled dinner with the newly elected prime minister of Spain and a select group of Spanish business leaders.

Earlier that morning he had breakfasted with Italian prime minister Aldo Visconti, and afterward he'd addressed the Italian parliament. His grand dinner at the Palazzo del Quirinale with Mario Tonti, the president of Italy, the night before, had been filled with warmth and goodwill and the two leaders developed a bond almost immediately. By evening's end Harris had invited the Italian president to visit him at his ranch in the California wine country, and Tonti had enthusiastically accepted. That the relationship had developed as it had was important politically, because even as the Italian populace was wary of America's moves and intentions in the Middle East, Tonti had gone out of his way to show the president that he had a strong and dependable ally in Europe. This morning Prime Minister Visconti had assured Harris of the same. The support of both men was a crucial gain for his tour and all the more important after his more painful experiences in Paris and Berlin, and he was grateful for it. Yet it was Paris and Berlin, or rather the leaders of France and Germany, that still hung in his mind. He had dropped his idea of discussing the Jake Lowe-Dr. James Marshall problem with either Secretary of State Chaplin or Defense Secretary Langdon because he knew that if he did, it would become an overriding cause for worry, and the attention to it would take away the focus on their overall mission.