The Machiavelli Covenant Page 17

  • 6:22 P.M.

  The line moved closer and Harris could see the ticket sellers in their cages checking the identification of every person buying a ticket, and CNP agents inside the ticket cages with them overseeing the process.

  Slowly, easily, he stepped away from the line and walked toward the men's restroom. What he had to do was get out of the building and find some other way to Gerona. What that would be he didn't know, because he was certain every bus and train terminal would be under the same heavy surveillance.

  Harris passed a news kiosk. Prominently displayed was ADN, apparently a major Barcelona newspaper. The front page had a photograph of himself leaving the presidential limousine, taken at some point the day before. The headline in Spanish read:

  ¡HARRIS HUYE DE AMENAZA TERRORISTA EN MADRID!

  —HARRIS FLEES TERRORIST THREAT IN MADRID!

  Head down he kept on, passing shops, restaurants, and an ungodly number of uniformed police. Finally he reached the men's restroom and went inside, passing a policeman stationed just inside the door. Half a dozen men stood at urinals. Harris went immediately into a stall and closed the door. What to do next? This was a nightmare beyond nightmares. He wished to hell he could wake up from it and find it had all been just that, a gruesome dream. But it wasn't and he knew it. He had to find a way out of the building, even though he knew nothing of Barcelona, let alone how to find some safe transportation to Gerona.

  He sat down on the toilet and tried to think. For the moment, at least here, with the stall door closed, he was safe. But that would last only until someone else tried to use it or the policeman stationed at the door became suspicious and came to check on him. His first thought was to take a chance and call Rabbi David in Gerona and ask him to get in his car and drive here, then arrange for a place to meet and hide somewhere nearby until he arrived. But he knew from what was going on in the station that that was out of the question. If he had worried before that the rabbi's phones would be fully monitored there was no doubt of it now. Seemingly every inch of everything everywhere was covered. His pursuers, even if they didn't realize it, were literally steps away from him.

  It meant he had to slow things down and take them a step at a time, just as he had at the Ritz. The first move was to find a way out of the station. Once on the streets he could decide the next course of action. To do that he had to do what he had done in Madrid, use his knowledge of how public buildings were constructed and use the station's mechanical interior—the hidden corridors that contained the heating, air-conditioning, plumbing, and electrical systems—as a way out. The way a mouse or rat would find his way to freedom.

  Harris stood up and flushed the toilet and was about to open the door when he saw a folded copy of La Van-guardia with his photograph on the cover lying on the floor near his feet. Immediately he saw it as a prop, something he could use to casually shield his face on the way through the station until he found an entrance to the maintenance corridors he was looking for. Additionally, he might learn something of the smoke-screen story the White House press corps had put out and see how "his friends," most especially the master manipulator Jake Lowe, had managed to sound the general alarm without telling the truth or upsetting the public any more than had already been done.

  Quickly Harris picked up the paper, tucked it under his arm, then flushed the toilet once more, opened the stall door, and went out.

  47

  • HOTEL REGENTE MAJESTIC, 7:15 P.M.

  Nicholas Marten sat alone in the hotel lounge waiting for a cell phone call back from Peter Fadden who was now in Madrid, gone there to cover the story surrounding the abrupt evacuation of the president from the Hotel Ritz the night before. Fadden had been on with him momentarily, then had to click off to take another call, promising to call back right away.

  His hair slicked back and dressed in fresh khakis, crew-neck sweater, and light sport coat, Marten looked appreciably different from the man who had checked into this same hotel and then checked out only a short while later. His situation was helped too by the fact that none of the hotel staff who had been on earlier was on duty now.

  Demi, he'd learned to his great relief, had not checked out as he'd feared. Moreover Reverend Beck had finally arrived and registered, though neither was in their rooms at present, or at least they weren't answering their phones if they were. Marten had checked the bar, coffee shop, and restaurant just to make certain they weren't there. Therefore he felt it safe to assume that unless they were in another guest room somewhere, they were not in the building.

  His seat in the lounge gave him a view of the front door, the registration desk, and the elevators past it. Meaning that Demi or Beck or both would have to pass by him when they returned. He didn't like sitting there exposed as he was, but in his days as an LAPD detective he'd done enough surveillance to know the mechanics of it. Come and go once in a while, pretend you're waiting for someone who has yet to arrive. Ultimately, of course, he would have to leave, but not at the moment. And at the moment what he was doing was buying time waiting for Demi to return and for Peter Fadden to call. Time, on the other hand, was itself problematic. By now Foxx or whoever had set Karl Melzer on his trail would know Melzer was dead and would have scurried to get someone to take his place. After that there would be calls to every hotel in Barcelona looking for someone who had registered as Nicholas Marten—"I'm trying to find a friend" or "my cousin, his name is"—or something like that, Melzer's replacement would say. And even with as many hotels as there were in the city, it would probably take less than half an hour to find him. Then they would know where he was and the entire thing would begin again.

  Marten was turning to get a better view of the front door when his cell phone chirped and he clicked on.

  "This is Marten."

  "It's Peter," Fadden's voice was as clear as if he were sitting beside him. "Sorry it took so long. The Secret Service took the president out of the hotel in the middle of the night to an undisclosed location. They're saying it was a credible terrorist kidnap threat and that the suspects are still loose and trying to get out of the country. They've got just about every Spaniard who can fit into a uniform trying to find them never mind what's going on with the Secret Service, CIA, and the FBI."

  "I know, Peter, I saw the news."

  "Whatever's going on I'm pretty much here alone. The White House press secretary shut down everything and sent the whole press corps back to Washington. Why, I don't know, except that's where all the official news will come from once something breaks. Of course they'll all turn right around and bring everybody back for the NATO meeting Monday in Warsaw. But that's not what you want to talk about. It's the Caroline Parsons thing. The clinic, that stuff."

  "Yes."

  "The clinic is legitimate. She was taken from her home to the Silver Spring Rehabilitation Center in Silver Spring, Maryland. She was there for six days until she was transferred to University Hospital. Dr. Stephenson was a consulting physician there and approved her admittance and then the transfer. No one on staff ever heard of or saw anyone who looked like Foxx."

  Marten took a breath, then glanced around the room. Maybe a dozen people at most were gathered at surrounding tables. None was paying him the slightest attention. He turned back to the phone.

  "Peter, I've got something else. Stephenson and Foxx belonged to a cult, a coven of witches—"

  "Witches?"

  "Yes."

  "Oh for chrissake!"

  "Peter, stop and listen," Marten demanded sotto voce.

  "I told you before how Foxx had a tiny balled cross tattooed on his thumb. Stephenson had one too. And maybe Beck as well."

  Marten looked up as a young couple sat down at a small table next to him. He got up and walked toward the hotel's lobby, cell phone to his ear.

  "That balled cross is the sign of Aldebaran," Marten said as he went, "the pale red star that forms the left eye in the constellation Taurus. It is also called the 'Eye of God.'"

  "What the hell
are you talking about?"

  "Some kind of cult, Peter."

  "And you think this 'cult' had something to do with Caroline Parsons's death and those of her husband and son?"

  "Possibly. I don't know. But Foxx was increasingly upset when I questioned him. I told you he denied knowing Stephenson at all. Maybe your people found no record of him being at the clinic when Caroline was there but she not only described what he looked like and what his hands looked like but the tattoo as well. Peter, he was at the clinic, believe me. Beck was with him in Malta. And now Beck is here in Barcelona and is expected to meet with him again soon. I'm trying to find out where and when. If I do maybe I'll find out why."

  Marten had reached the lobby and was crossing it. A bellman pushing a luggage cart was coming toward him. He stopped and turned away.

  "Peter, there's something else. Foxx, or someone, had me followed from Valletta to Barcelona. It was a professional job—one guy handed me off to another at Barcelona airport. I thought I lost him, but he showed up at a restaurant where I was having lunch. I found later he was German, a civil engineer working for a company in Munich."

  "Why would a civil engineer be—?"

  "That's what I said. But it's legitimate, I called his office and checked up on him."

  "Where is he now?"

  "Dead."

  "What?"

  The bellman passed and Marten turned back. As he did the elevator doors across the lobby opened. To his surprise he saw Demi walk out. With her was Reverend Beck and an older woman, Spanish or Italian maybe, and dressed in black.

  "Peter, I've got to go. I'll check in with you when I can."

  Instantly Marten clicked off then watched the threesome cross the lobby toward the front door. He held back as they went out, watching as Beck spoke with the doorman. A moment later a taxi pulled up, the three got in, and the taxi drove off.

  Marten pushed through the door and went out. "Do you speak English?" he asked the doorman.

  "Yes, sir."

  "The three people who just left. I'm part of a group traveling with the reverend. I was supposed to meet them somewhere but I lost my itinerary. Do you happen to know where they went?"

  "To church, señor."

  "Church?"

  "The cathedral of Barcelona."

  Marten smiled, "Of course, the cathedral. Thank you."

  "You want to go there?"

  "Yes, thank you."

  "Well, you are in luck, as your friends were."

  Marten was puzzled, "How do you mean?"

  "Usually the cathedral is only open until seven. But this month until ten. It is a celebration. It was closed for a long time for restoration but has now just reopened." The doorman smiled, "So you want to go still?"

  "Yes."

  The doorman motioned for a taxi. A moment later it arrived. Marten gave him a ten-euro tip, then got in, and the cab pulled away.

  48

  • 7:40 P.M.

  John Henry Harris stood in the doorway of a convenience store watching the woman work her section of the street. She was blond, with pale white skin that was almost porcelain. Twenty at most, she looked Scandinavian or German, maybe even Russian. Her nationality didn't matter; her profession did. With a revealing halter top and short, tight skirt, the way she walked up and down between cars every time traffic stopped, there was little doubt she was out there for hire and for the right price would probably do almost anything he or anyone else asked. And that was what John Harris needed now, someone to do what he asked—with no questions whatsoever.

  He had no idea where he was except that it was a dozen or more blocks from the train station. A place he'd escaped from not as planned by using inner service corridors, because the few he found had either been locked or strongly guarded. What he had done instead was take an enormous chance and set fire to the rear of a newspaper kiosk that was close to an exit door; a diversion, as the military or police would call it. And it had worked. The attention of Spanish security forces checking IDs at the nearest door had briefly been drawn to the flames and the near-panic from an already nervous public. Harris had calculated his timing and watched the guards rush from the door, and within seconds he was out on the street and gone.

  "Señorita," he said as the light changed and traffic moved forward and his girl sashayed from the street and onto the curb. She looked at him and smiled, then came closer.

  "¿Habla español?" Do you speak Spanish? he asked, hoping to hell she did. Not wanting to use English unless it was absolutely necessary.

  "Sí," she came a little closer.

  He peered over the rims of his glasses. "Necesito hablar con Ud. un momento." I would like a little of your time.

  "Sí. seguro." Sure. She grinned seductively and adjusted her halter top so that he could see more of her breasts.

  "No es lo que usted piensa." It's not what you think, he said quietly.

  "Da igual. Si significa dinero, lo haré." Whatever it is, if it pays money, I will do it.

  "Bueno," he said. "Bueno."

  • 7:55 P.M.

  Marten's taxi turned down one street and then another in slow traffic, moving back into the Gothic Quarter, where he had been earlier in the day. He was still up in the air about Demi, still wary of what she was doing, still unsure if he could trust her. That she hadn't answered her phone the several times he'd tried to reach her and after he'd specifically told her he'd call didn't help. Nor did the fact that whatever Beck's mood had been in Malta he'd managed to calm down enough to ask her to follow him to Barcelona, and that now they seemed all buddy-buddy. It made him think that no matter what she'd confided to him about the witches and the sign of Aldebaran at the restaurant, she had done it simply to placate him, hoping it would be enough to make him go away and let her concentrate on staying in Beck's good graces so she wouldn't be left behind when he went to meet Merriman Foxx. It was a thought that made him wonder if that's where the three were going now, to meet Foxx at the cathedral. It also raised the question of who the woman in black was.

  • 8:07 P.M.

  Marten felt a presence and looked up. The taxi driver was watching him in the mirror. He'd glanced at him more than once before and now he was openly staring at him. Suddenly Marten had the feeling he'd stumbled into some kind of trap, that either the cab driver was Salt and Pepper's replacement or was a stringer like the Four Cats waiter, someone hired to look for him.

  "What are you looking at?" he said.

  "No hablo English good," the man smiled.

  "Me," Marten pointed to his face, "you recognize me? I am familiar to you?" If this man was trouble and taking him somewhere other than to the cathedral he wanted it to come out now, so he could do something about it.

  "Sí," the man said, suddenly understanding, "Sí." Immediately his hand slid to the seat beside him and he picked up a copy of an evening newspaper. It was folded back and open to an interior page.

  "You Samaritan. You Samaritan."

  "What? What are you talking about?" Marten was thrown off.

  The man pushed the paper over the seat. Marten took it and looked at it. What he saw was a large photo of himself bent over the sprawled body of his Salt and Pepper man, Klaus Melzer, with the truck that had hit him in the background.

  "Buen Samaritano sin sentido—el hombre de la calle ya estaba muerto," the caption read. Marten didn't understand the Spanish but he got the gist of it—he was a good Samaritan for no reason, the man in the street was already dead.

  "Sí, Samaritano," Marten handed the paper back, swearing to himself as he did. Obviously someone in the crowd had taken a picture and sold it to the newspaper. They didn't have his name and there wasn't a story, so at least it wasn't about his having pilfered the dead man's wallet. Still, he didn't like it. It was bad enough he'd had to register at his hotel under his own name, but with his picture spread over the city like that it would make him all that much easier to find.

  Abruptly the taxi sped up, traveled a half block, then turned down ano
ther street, moving deeper into the Gothic Quarter, which he now realized was not just a tourist area, but a sprawling ancient neighborhood where narrow streets emptied into other narrow streets and then into squares. It was a maze one could easily become lost in, something that might have happened to Klaus Melzer, a German, unfamiliar with the city, doing nothing more than trying to get away from a man pursuing him and running directly into the path of an oncoming truck. It was something that again made him wonder why Foxx, or whoever had hired the salt-and-pepper civil engineer, had picked him over a local and why Melzer had agreed to do it.

  Just then the taxi slowed and stopped, its driver pointing toward a large square. Hotels and shops lined one side, while on the other stood a massive, ornate stone edifice with a complex series of lighted spires and bell towers that reached high into the evening sky.

  "The cathedral, señor," the cab driver said. "Catedral de Barcelona."

  49

  • 8:20 P.M.

  Marten crossed the square to join a group of English tourists as they walked up a series of stone steps and entered the cathedral.

  The atmosphere inside the fifteenth-century building's vast and ornate interior was hushed, its muted lighting broken by the flickering of hundreds of votive candles resting on tables on either side of the nave.

  Marten lingered as the group moved forward, his eyes scanning the room for Demi or Beck or the woman in black. Here and there people sat in silent prayer. Others walked respectfully around, gazing up at the architecture. At the far end of the nave was a high, elaborate altar. Above it towered Gothic arches that rose toward a ceiling he guessed was eighty feet high.