The Machiavelli Covenant (14 page)

"The plane carrying Representative Parsons and his son"—Hap Daniels was reading from notes taken in a
small spiral notebook. No BlackBerry here, no chance that the information he had received could have been electronically monitored, just handwritten notes jotted down in an everyday notebook. What he had learned had come over the STU, or secure-line phone, he had as part of his own personal communications equipment—"went down due to pilot error, at least according to investigators from the NTSB. No part of the aircraft was found to have malfunctioned."

"We know the official word, Hap," Harris said, "Is that all you were able to find out?"

"As far as the crash is concerned, yes, sir. The thing that no one seems to know about, or at least to have brought up, was that Mrs. Parsons was to have been on the flight with them. Her plans changed at the last minute and she flew back to Washington on a commercial flight. It was coincidental. There certainly was no conspiracy theory behind the crash. No reason to expect foul play. She never made a thing of it, at least publicly. It appears to have been one of those things that just happened."

"One of those things. . . ."

"Yes, sir."

President Harris nodded vaguely, trying to absorb whatever meaning there might or might not be in Caroline's change of plans, then immediately moved on.

"The man in Caroline's hospital room, the one Caroline gave legal access to her and Mike's private papers."

"All we have is what we knew before. His name is Nicholas Marten. He's an American ex-pat living in Manchester, England, and working as a landscape architect. He's seems to have known the Parsons family for a long time; at least that's what he told the D.C. police. Their feeling was that he and Caroline Parsons had had a rela
tionship of some kind. He said they were just old friends. No proof of it. But no sense he was blackmailing her either."

"Why did the police talk to him?"

"He'd made some pretty strong phone calls to Mrs. Parsons's doctor after she died. He wanted to ask her about Mrs. Parsons's illness but she wouldn't talk to him, claimed privileged information between doctor and patient. They thought he might have been involved in her murder. But there was nothing to hold him on so they put him on a plane to England and basically told him not to come back."

"The murder of Caroline Parsons's doctor? What do we have on that?"

"That's a nasty one, Mr. President. She was beheaded."

"Beheaded?"

"Yes, sir. The head hasn't been found, and the police have kept it very quiet during their investigation. The FBI has its own people on it."

"When was someone going to inform the White House?"

"I don't know, sir. Probably they felt there was no need."

"Why a beheading?"

"You're thinking some kind of terrorist act. Some Islamic group."

"It doesn't make any difference what I think. It's what I know. And so far no one seems to know much of anything. Get somebody you're comfortable with in the FBI to keep you on top of it. Tell them I'm interested personally but don't want the media to jump on it and blow it out of proportion. We don't need to stir up the Islamic
world any more than it's already stirred up, especially if there's nothing to it and the head business was done by some cuckoo out there."

"Yes, sir."

"Now," the president shifted gears. "Caroline Parsons. I want a report on what kind of infection she had, how she got it, and the treatment for it, from initial diagnosis to death. Again, I don't want to send up a flare, I just want the information as quietly as you can get it. We've got four people dead here in a very short time. Three from the same family and the last, Caroline's doctor."

"There's something else you should know, Mr. President. I don't know if it means anything but Representative Parsons . . ."

"What about him?"

"He tried to get an appointment to see you privately. Twice. Once during his subcommittee hearings on terrorism. Once again the day they were concluded."

"How do you know?"

"His secretary requested it, but she never heard back."

"Mike Parsons had full access to me, anytime. Chief of staff knew that, my secretary knew it too. What happened?"

"I don't know, sir. You'd have to ask them."

Suddenly Hap Daniels put a hand to his headset; at the same time the limousine slowed and then leaned as the Secret Service driver made a sharp right turn and started up a long private driveway.

"Thank you," Daniels said into his headset, then looked to the president. "We're here, sir. Mr. Byrd's residence."

Evan Byrd greeted him at the door like an old school chum he hadn't seen for years, not with a handshake but a bear hug.

"Damn good to see you, John," he said, leading him past an ornate fountain and then inside through a Spanish-tiled foyer and into a small dark-paneled room with a full bar and big leather chairs that faced a fireplace where a warming fire crackled.

"Not bad for a retired civil servant, huh?" Byrd grinned. "Sit down. What can I fix you to drink?"

"I don't know. I've had my share of everything tonight, just water or coffee, black, if you have it."

"Damned right I have it." Byrd winked and pressed a button on an intercom at the bar and ordered coffee in Spanish. Then he walked over and sat down in a big chair next to Harris.

Evan Byrd was in his early seventies and dressed casually in cream-colored slacks and a matching sweater. He seemed a little on the heavy side but otherwise appeared in good shape, still favoring the stylish long gray hair and matching sideburns Harris remembered. Byrd had been around network television and Washington politics for nearly forty years before he retired to Spain, and still had an active Rolodex that would put most Washington insiders to shame, meaning he knew just about everyone worth knowing and as a result wielded considerable influence without ever seeming to.

"Well," he said, "how did it go tonight?"

"I'm not sure." Harris let his gaze fall to the fire. "Spain is in a war with itself. The prime minister's a nice guy, too
much of an altruist maybe and too far to the left to get anything done to really boost the country's economy. But the business leaders, the power guys who joined us for dinner, most of them are fiscally conservative, they see the bottom line as part of the national identity. They have money to invest and at the same time want to be invested in. They want to be in the same global marketplace as everyone else. That puts them at odds with their own leadership. But still the prime minister had the cojones to have them there, so you've gotta give him credit for that. Of course they're all worried about terrorism and where the next shoe will drop. No one's being helped on that count."

"What about France and Germany?"

"You read the papers, Evan. You watch TV. You know as well as I do. Not good."

"What are you going to do about it?"

"I don't know." For the briefest moment the president looked off, then his gaze went to Byrd. "I really don't know."

Just then a voice came over the intercom in Spanish. "Your coffee is ready, sir."

"Gracias," Byrd spoke into the intercom and then stood. "Come on, John, we'll take coffee in the living room." He grinned as President Harris got up from his chair. "I have a surprise for you."

Harris groaned. "Not at this time of night. Evan, I'm too damn tired."

"Trust me, you'll love it."

Seven men waited in the room as they entered and the president knew every one of them. Vice President of the United States Hamilton Rogers. Secretary of State David Chaplin. Secretary of Defense Terrence Langdon. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, United States Air
Force General Chester Keaton, and the men he had last seen in Rome: Tom Curran, his chief of staff; his chief political adviser, Jake Lowe; and national security adviser, Dr. James Marshall.

Evan Byrd closed the door behind them.

"Well, gentlemen, this is indeed a surprise," Harris said evenly, trying not to show his astonishment at their presence. "To what do I owe it?"

"Mr. President," Lowe began, "as you know the NATO meeting in Warsaw is to take place a very few days from now. Before, when we went into Iraq, when we had problems with France and Germany and Russia, our people were not yet in place. Now they are. We have been assured of this by friends of trust. Friends who are in a position to know."

"What friends? Who are you talking about?"

"In order to prevent the kind of unthinkable catastrophe I spoke of earlier"—National Security Adviser Marshall stepped forward—"of terrorist groups taking over the entire Middle East and its oil supply in a very short composite of time, it has become necessary for us to take a full and decisive initiative in that part of the world. To do that we can have no dissent in the United Nations. We have been assured that neither Germany nor France will object this time when we ask for their vote. And, as you know, if they do not object, in all probability neither will Russia or China."

"Assured?"

"Yes, sir, assured."

The president looked around at faces as familiar as family. Like Lowe and Jim Marshall, these people had been his most trusted friends and advisers for years. What the hell was going on? "Just what is it
we
are going to
do
in the Middle East?"

"Unfortunately, we're not in a position to tell you, Mr. President," Secretary of Defense Terrence Langdon said directly. "The reason we are here is to ask you to authorize the physical removal of the current leaders of France and Germany."

"Physical removal. . . ." The president looked to Lowe and Marshall. They had started it earlier; now they had the whole team with them. He didn't understand. He was a conservative Republican, the same as they were. They had been behind him all the way, made certain he was nominated, then pulled out every stop possible to guarantee his election. "I think assassination is the word you want, Mr. Secretary."

Then it came to him like a thunderbolt and shook him to his core. He wasn't their president at all; he was their pawn and had been from the beginning. He was there because they had put him there. Because they had been certain he would do whatever they asked.

"Who are these 'friends of trust' you are referring to?" he asked.

"Members of an organization who have guaranteed that the people who will be voted to replace the president of France and the chancellor of Germany will wholly support whatever we do."

"I see," the president said finally. There was no point in asking what this "organization" was because they wouldn't tell him. Instead he put his hands in his pockets and walked over to where a large window opened out onto lighted formal gardens. Through it he could see two Secret Service agents standing in the shadows. There would be more he couldn't see.

For a long moment he stood there with his back to them. They were waiting for his answer. They could wait a while longer as he tried to put it together, to understand
how all this had happened and what would happen next. As he did, Jake Lowe's words cut through him.

Before, when we went into Iraq, when we had problems with France and Germany and Russia our people were not yet in place. Now they are
.

Our
people.

Now they are
.

Now
they are.

Whatever this organization was, it was strikingly clear that they, all of them, were members of it and what they had planned they had been working on for a long time. And now, finally, they had people in every country that counted in position to execute it, himself included. He looked back and then started across the room toward them.

"Does Harry Ivers belong to this 'organization'? You all know Harry Ivers, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. The man in charge of investigating the crash of Congressman Parsons's plane." Suddenly he looked to Tom Curran, his chief of staff.

"Congressman Parsons tried to get an appointment to see me. Twice. Once during and once immediately following the close of the subcommittee hearings on intelligence and counterterrorism. You knew he had full access to me at any time. Why didn't those meetings happen?"

"Your schedule was full, Mr. President."

"That's bullshit, Tom." The president looked around the room, stopping at each of the eight men in turn. "Congressman Parsons was onto something, wasn't he? It had to do with his subcommittee looking into the supposedly dead South African bioweapons program and the questioning of this Dr. Merriman Foxx. I'm guessing that that program or some offshoot of it is not dead at all. And whatever it is, somehow we, or rather you and your 'friends of trust,' are involved with it.

"You thought Mike Parsons as a strong conservative would go along with it but he wouldn't and threatened to bring it to me if you didn't back away from it. The result was you killed him."

There was a long silence and then National Security Adviser Marshall spoke. "He couldn't be trusted, Mr. President."

The president suddenly became furious. "And his son and everyone else on board that plane?"

"It was a matter of national security." Marshall was cold and unemotional.