The Machiavelli Covenant (44 page)

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."

•
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!"

•
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 sanctu
ary 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.