The Machiavelli Covenant (66 page)

"She would betray us as these have!" she said suddenly in English, a sweep of the ruby wand pointed at the heads on the Aldebaran crosses. In the next instant she uttered three sharp, distinctive words in the language she had spoken before. Immediately blue-red flame burst through the fog from gas jets in the floor beneath the heads. As it did a great cry went up from the congregation.

The monitors showed people leaning forward in their seats, straining to see. In seconds the heads were on fire. A half minute later their skin blistered up like meat thrown on a barbecue.

Immediately Demi's face filled a half dozen monitor screens. She screamed and kept on screaming. Four other monitors showed Cristina looking at her in alarm, as if the drugs given her before had worn off and she realized what was happening. Suddenly her eyes went wide as two monks appeared from the fog and dark and strapped her quickly and tightly to the throne. As quickly they stepped back and disappeared from view. All the while other monitors focused on the burning heads. On Luciana and Beck. Followed in rapid succession by cuts on people in the congregation. Then the cameras moved in for close-ups of the newly introduced members of the institute.

A heartbeat later they cut to the vice president's "dear, dear friends"—Congresswoman Jane Dee Baker;
Secretary of State David Chaplin; Secretary of Defense Terrence Langdon; chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Chester Keaton; Chief of Staff Tom Curran; and presidential confidant Evan Byrd.

The president had been right when he said they were of another species altogether. No one there was merely a participant in murder or witness to an execution. There was another level to it entirely. Like Romans at the Colosseum's ancient barbaric spectacles, they were there for the show because it gave them immense and untold pleasure.

"This is just the beginning," the president said, his voice cracking in horror. An unthinkable situation made ten thousand times worse because he knew there was absolutely nothing they could do about it.

"The women will burn next."

The hell they will. Neither one of them." Marten was already moving for the door.

Hap grabbed him just as he reached it and shoved him hard against the wall. "You try and help them, you expose the president. They know he's with you. They'll know he's in the building. I told you before, put it out of your mind. It's just the goddamn way it is."

"No! It's not the way it is. I'm not going to let those women be burned alive." Marten looked angrily at the president. "Tell him to let go of me! Tell him now!"

"The president doesn't have a vote here," Hap kept Marten pinned against the wall. "I have a sworn obligation to protect and maintain the continuation of the govern
ment, to protect the person who is president. No one in this room is going anywhere until I say so."

The chanting started again as the monks formed a large figure eight on the stage, then began what seemed like some carefully choreographed dance, circling first Cristina and then Demi and then repeating it, their song rising and falling in a ghostly, macabre timbre that was both emotionally powerful and wholly unnerving.

"Hap," the president said deliberately, "you know the layout of the building. The way up to the church proper, to the door behind the altar I was going to use to make my entrance. How long would it take Marten to get to that door from here?"

"Without trouble, I'd guess about forty seconds. Why?"

"The electrical panels are in there." The president indicated the locked narrow door in the wall next to them. "We give Marten those forty seconds, then shut off the power. Maybe a few emergency lights will come on, but except for the brightness of the flame from the gas jets the whole place basically goes dark. There were flashlights near a workbench in the storeroom we were first in. Marten goes there, takes two of them, puts one in his belt, uses the other to light his way to the altar door. When he gets there he goes through it and walks calmly onto the stage, flashlight in hand. He's still in his groundskeeper's uniform. It's dark. Nobody knows what's going on. He shines the light around like he's a maintenance man there to fix the problem. Then sets it on the stage, the light still on, drawing attention. Somebody questions him, he doesn't reply. He calmly walks around behind the women as if he's looking to repair something, then cuts them free, takes them back through the altar door, and uses the other flashlight to get back
down the stairs to the corridor near the door where we came in. We're already there waiting and all of us go out it. The time from when Marten leaves to when we leave the building shouldn't be more than four, five minutes. Six at most."

"Cousin," Marten said, "all the doors to the outside are electronically locked."

"My guess is the minute the power is cut the door locks release. They wouldn't chance trapping all these VIPs during a power loss. If the fire brigade had to break in to free them, their whole game could be revealed." He looked to Hap. "You agree?"

"Mr. President. Just damn forget it!"

"Do you agree, Hap?" The president pressed him firmly.

"About the locks, yes. Not the rest of it, not for a second."

The president ignored his protest. "It'll be a shock when they realize the women are gone. The whole place will erupt, but it'll take more than a few minutes to figure out what happened. By then we're out, either in the cart and gone back down the hill or out of sight because Woody's coming in with the chopper."

"Mr. President, we just can't risk—"

"Hap, we have one shot," the president was still pushing and hard. It was the way he did things when he believed in something but still valued someone else's opinion. If it could be done, say so. If it couldn't, say that too. "Can Marten do it?"

"The sudden blackout. The surprise. The quick in and out. With a team, maybe. But for one man alone whose only knowledge of the target area is from the monitors and he's trying to work fast and in the dark . . . and not just any one man—the minute Marten steps into the
light of those gas jets Beck is going to recognize him. Those monks rush him and suddenly he's in a one-man war and they know you're somewhere here. It's a helluva risk, Mr. President, an easy ninety-nine-to-one against."

"Marten and I were alone in the dark in the tunnels. We took a helluva risk there too and nobody was giving any odds at all. Hap, the power is off, the doors unlock, it lets us choose the time when we move and go out. All of us, the women included."

Hap glanced at Marten, then took a breath and relented. "Okay," he said, "okay," then ran a hand through his hair and turned away. His concession hadn't been because of the women or the force of the president's personality but because of the situation. He had given in for the same reason he had when the president had demanded that they alert Woody and order him to fly in for an air rescue: opportunity.

The president had been right when he said at some point "damn soon" they were going to have to trust somebody and despite his concern about trusting anyone, if he had to choose someone here and now it would be Woody, if for no other reason than his flying skills. He could come in over those treetops, set the chopper down in that small parking lot behind the church and get them the hell out of there faster and more safely than anyone he knew. In the worst-case scenario afterward, if he tried to fly them to the CIA jet, both Hap and Marten were armed and could force him to set the aircraft down wherever they chose.

The situation here was more immediate. One way or another they would soon be trying to get out to that parking lot and text-messaging Woody for rescue. By cutting the building's power, which he agreed would most probably release the electronic door locks, it would let
them set their own timetable for when they would go out instead of having to wait for the ceremony to end and be at the mercy of whatever else might happen then.

Added to that was the fact that Marten's attempt to rescue the women would cause a major disruption in the church. Whatever Marten did when he went in would happen fast and mostly in the dark. Because of it the vice president, Beck, Luciana, the monks, everyone, would be taken wholly by surprise. Maybe Marten and the women would escape, maybe not, but either way confusion would rule. It was just that upheaval that Hap saw as giving him the best opportunity yet to get the president out alive.

"Me." Abruptly José stepped forward. He looked at the president and spoke in Spanish, "I understand a little of what you are saying. I will go with Mr. Marten. Together we will be Hap's 'team.' "

The president stared at him, then smiled. "Gracias," he said and quickly translated.

"What the hell is he going to do but get in the way?" Hap said.

"Be a diversion," Marten said quickly. "He's Spanish. He's dressed in a maintenance uniform. He becomes the front guy out there on the stage with a flashlight. Somebody asks him a question, he answers something like the power went out and he was told to see if he could fix it." Marten paused. "It gives me time, Hap. Thirty seconds, a minute when everyone's looking at him and I'm on the back part of the stage going for the women."

"Right," Hap agreed. It was one more card for them to play in the darkened church, giving them that much more of a complication and that much more of a chance to get the president out.

Immediately the president nodded toward the locked narrow door in the wall. "Open that up and let's look at the electrical panels. Shoot the locks off—there's no time for anything else."

Marten slid the Sig Sauer from his belt, then took off his shirt and wrapped it around the muzzle for a makeshift silencer.

At the same moment the chant of the monks rose. It was strong and deliberate and powerful, as if the immediate precursor to some event. Suddenly a wall of blue-red flame erupted through the fog. A great cry went up from the congregation as, in an instant, the flame encircled first Demi and then Cristina.

"Oh God, no!" the president breathed, his eyes locked on the monitors.

They saw Demi on a dozen screens as she fought wildly against the bonds that held her firmly to the Aldebaran cross but her struggle was impossible and she knew it. Wide-eyed in terror, she stared at the flames surrounding her then looked to Cristina.

"The ox was a lie!" she yelled. "A trick! You were betrayed! Your family was betrayed! All the families through the centuries have been betrayed! You thought this was part of a deep sacred religion! It is!" Her eyes shifted to congregation. "But it's theirs, not yours!"

They saw Luciana smile jubilantly, then step to the front of the stage and, like the grand actress she was, throw her arms wide to the congregation and call out something in their ritual tongue. En masse they repeated it. Again she spoke, her eyes luminous, her phrasing distinct and powerful, as if she were calling forth ancient gods. Then without warning she drew her arms around her and stepped back, vanishing into the fog.

Seconds later an apparition in a hooded black robe
appeared from the very same spot. It crossed to the front of the stage and raised its head.

Beck.

Slowly he raised his arms to the gathering, and in his great melodious voice and in the same unknown tongue Luciana had used, he unleashed what sounded like a mighty oration. At length he finished and the congregation answered back. Again Beck preached. Again the congregation answered back. Then Beck gave them more. And then more still. With every breath intensifying his blistering salutation as if to draw down the heavens.

Each time the congregation responded. Each time Beck increased his delivery. His passion, momentum, and fervor bellowing forth like some unstoppable hell-bound train. It was a colossal, highly orchestrated performance designed to boil the blood and make unforgettable the emotion of this heavily guarded, closely shared experience. And Beck kept it going until the entire building threatened to collapse under the sheer force of it.

It might well have been ancient Rome.

Or Nazi Germany.

Pop! Pop!

Marten fired the Sig Sauer. The locks on the electrical-room door blasted apart. In an instant Hap ripped it open and then he and Marten and the president moved into the small room. Directly in front of them was a massive electrical panel with two dozen large circuit breakers, with an indication in Spanish of what area of the church
each circuit was for. At the top were two larger switches with the words
Alimentación Exterior
—Outside Feed—lettered in bold black directly above them. Those were the ones the president wanted.

"There may be other panels in the building but those two should shut down everything."

"That door we just came through," Hap was suddenly looking around, "is not an emergency access to this room. It's the only access. Somebody wanted complete control over who got in here."

"Foxx," Marten said. Then something caught his eye: a second narrow steel door mounted into yet another solid concrete wall at the far end of the room. This door, like the first, had flush-mounted hinges but no noticeable hardware, no knob and no apparent lock. What it did have was centered in the wall just above it—the same kind of infrared sensor that had been mounted alongside the monstrous steel door at the end of the monorail tunnel.

Marten took a step closer, looking from that wall to the one next to it that separated the electrical room from the video room. The walls met at right angles, as they should. The difference was the wall here was set a good three feet farther into the room than the same wall in the room where the monitors were mounted.