The Machiavelli Covenant Read online

  "Is the woman in black going with you to Montserrat?"

  "Who?" Demi seemed wholly surprised.

  "Earlier tonight you and Beck left the hotel and went to the cathedral. A woman in black was with you, an older woman."

  "How did you know?"

  "How I know isn't important. I'm interested in who she is and what she has to do with Beck."

  "Her name is Luciana," Demi answered matter-of-factly and without hesitation. "She's an Italian friend of the reverend. She was with him at the hotel when I arrived."

  "Is she the one he had to leave Malta to come here to meet?"

  "I don't know, but it was she who arranged the trip to the monastery through a priest at the cathedral." Demi glanced at the people around her, then looked back to Marten and lowered her voice. "She belongs to the coven. She has the tattoo on her thumb. And yes, she's going with us."

  Marten looked at the president. He could see he was puzzled. He knew there was information being passed but he had no idea what it was. Marten was about to say something, to try and explain but was cut off by the scream of a siren as another police car shot past them, its loudspeaker blaring, ordering drivers to pull to the side. Following in its wake were two large dark blue trucks marked Mossos d'Esquadra. A hundred yards ahead the vehicles stopped dead, the trucks' rear doors flew open, and at least two dozen heavily armed police jumped out.

  "Dammit," the president blurted under his breath.

  All around them people stared wide-eyed. "Terroristas." "Al Qaeda." The words came more quickly this time, more numerous and more fearful.

  The president looked to Marten. "They're widening their net and turning up the heat. From here on out they'll have every street, every alley, shut down tight."

  "Then we turn and go back," Marten said calmly.

  "To where?"

  "We're considerate fellows. The young lady was trying to get to her hotel and we thoughtfully escorted her."

  Demi started. "You're going to my hotel?"

  "At least you have a room, and I don't think they're going to let us in anywhere else. We'll have to fake our way past the people at the front desk."

  "How are we going to get there?" Demi nodded toward the mass of snarled traffic. "If we take a cab we'll be stopped at the next roadblock. It's one thing if I'm alone. With you two we'll all be caught, and that will be that."

  "She's right," the president said.

  Marten hesitated, then looked back over his shoulder the way they had come. "We walk."

  "What?" Demi blurted.

  Marten looked back. "The same as here. We walk."

  62

  • RIVOLI JARDÍN HOTEL, SAME TIME, 4:20 A.M.

  Intense, heavily controlled chaos. Very nearly an exact repeat of what had taken place less than twenty-four hours earlier at the Hotel Ritz in Madrid.

  Uniformed Barcelona police under the supervision of GEO agents and CIA assets Ortega, Leon, and Tarrega checked the identification of every person in the hotel. Guests were awoken from sleep, their rooms searched, identifications checked. Hotel employees and patrons and musicians from the Jamboree Club were treated with the same polite ferocity. The police were following up on a tip that "known terrorists had checked into the hotel under false names"—two, it was rumored, had already been found and arrested. Even the affable Basque singer Fermín Murguruza was questioned and then released, all the while signing autographs for surrounding fans also being questioned. "Under the circumstances," Murguruza said proudly, "who would not try to help the authorities?"

  Additionally, Hap Daniels's strict directive to check "every closet, toilet, hallway, every last inch, and that includes the goddamn air-conditioning ducts this time" was followed to the letter and then the entire procedure was repeated.

  In room 408 a tech crew provided by Spanish intelligence and under the command of Special Agent Bill Strait inched over everything. One floor below, a meeting room had been turned into a Secret Service command post. A secure phone had been installed with a direct line to the U.S. embassy in Madrid and another to Washington and the working war room set up in the basement of the White House. Most obvious and pressing was the ongoing situation with the president, but increasingly worrisome was what to do about the upcoming NATO meeting Monday in Warsaw, where President Harris was to announce a new spirit of "political accord" and "solidarity against terrorism" despite the still-festering "difficulties" with Germany and France.

  "Who's there with you?" Jake Lowe paced up and down, secure phone to his ear, on the line to Secretary of State David Chaplin at the White House while National Security Adviser James Marshall listened on the phone's extension just feet away. A weary, infuriated Hap Daniels stood partway across the room, one eye on Lowe and Marshall, the other on the small cadre of quickly-brought-in CIA techs working laptops and monitoring the Barcelona hunt for the president.

  "Terry Langdon and Chet Keaton. The vice president is on his way," Chaplin said.

  "The president's ill, we're more certain than ever of that now. Moreover, he seems to have this American-Brit, Nicholas Marten, helping him. How and why and to what end we don't know." Lowe's clear-cut explanation was wholly for Hap Daniels's benefit.

  "Obviously he's very determined, and now he's got help," Chaplin said in the part of the conversation Daniels couldn't hear. "As long as he remains on the loose he's dangerous as hell because he will find a way to expose us. That said, Terry's insistent about Monday. Everything's in place and he feels we can't let this situation hold us back. If worse comes to worst we'll announce he's got the stomach flu or something and the vice president will take his place in Warsaw. Meanwhile the media is starting to push for more information on what happened in Madrid and where the POTUS is now. The honeymoon hours are almost over; we're going to have to give them something."

  "Get the chief of staff and the press secretary on the line and we'll decide what to do now," Lowe snapped.

  "David, can you hear me?" Marshall stepped in.

  "Yes, Jim."

  "Regarding Warsaw. Jake and I agree. We are going under the assumption all this will be put to bed and the president will be there as planned."

  "Right."

  "Terry, you there?"

  "Yes, Jim," Secretary of Defense Langdon's voice came through strongly.

  "I just explained to David, we all agree about Warsaw," Marshall glanced casually around the room, making certain Daniels or someone else wasn't being overcurious about his conversation. "We're going ahead as planned."

  "Good."

  "At this point no changes at all," Marshall turned to look at Jake Lowe.

  "Right."

  "More when we have something," Lowe said, and hung up. Marshall did the same. When he turned he saw Hap Daniels was watching him.

  63

  • 4:42 A.M.

  The three were pushed back into the darkened doorway waiting for the police car to pass. When it did they lingered another twenty seconds to make sure a second car wasn't following behind it. Finally they stepped out and moved on. By now Marten, Demi, and President Harris had worked their way back to Ciutat Vella, the old city, with its ancient buildings and narrow streets. Streets that, except for the lone passerby or the startling wail of a stray cat underfoot or the bark of a dog at the end of an alley as they passed, were finally quiet. That they had come this far unmolested was due to luck and because they had stayed in the shadows and followed their instincts. A turn here, another there. A stepping back in the dark and waiting for a person or vehicle to pass. The president, floppy hat pulled low, had stopped once to speak Spanish to an old man sitting alone on a curbstone, asking the way to Rambla de Catalunya, where Demi's hotel was. The old man had not even looked up, just simply pointed off and mumbled.

  "Sigue por ahí tres minutos y luego gire a la derecha." That way three minutes and then turn right.

  "Gracias," the president said and they moved on.

  Their constant fear was the stranger passing who, by some quirk of ci
rcumstance, might recognize the president and sound the alarm, or the police car still on patrol unexpectedly turning a corner, to have its officers suddenly stop and question them. Or that Spanish intelligence, the Secret Service or CIA assets were stationed on rooftops watching them through night-vision goggles and at any minute a helicopter would roar in from nowhere to hold them in the searing beam of its searchlight until unmarked cars arrived and special agents jumped out to take them away.

  It was five, maybe ten minutes more before they would reach the relative safety of Demi's hotel. The plan was for Demi to go to her room and for them to follow shortly afterward. There in its quiet and relative safety they would have the chance to address the near-impossible task before them: find a way to get the president and Marten past the hundreds of police checkpoints and the thirty-odd miles to the monastery at Montserrat at or about the same time Demi arrived with Reverend Beck and the woman called Luciana for their rendezvous with Merriman Foxx.

  It was a problem that brought Marten back to the question of Demi herself. She was a respected journalist and photographer using her profession, as she had said, to uncover the truth of her sister's disappearance from Malta two years earlier and trusting that Merriman Foxx might provide some answer to it. Whether the story of her sister was true or not, everything seemed to center on the Aldebaran coven of witches and with it, the Machiavellian tale of ritual murder. That Foxx, Luciana, Cristina, the young woman who had been a guest at the dinner table in Malta, the late Dr. Lorraine Stephenson in Washington, and possibly Beck all wore the identifying tattoo of the coven intrigued him immensely. That Demi did not—Marten had scrutinized both her thumbs carefully, without her knowing, on more than one occasion—was equally interesting because she seemed to have gained access to them without trouble, most probably by convincing Beck to be one of the subjects of her book. That in itself raised another question—why Beck had let her; even to the point of inviting her to Barcelona after he'd so abruptly left Malta and providing a means for her transportation as well. Two things came immediately to mind. Either the coven was wholly innocuous and, secretive as it might seem, had nothing to hide; or it wasn't, and Beck was leading her on for reasons of his own. If the second were true she could very well be walking into something exceedingly dangerous, maybe even deadly.

  Whichever it was, whether she was using Beck or he was guiding her into something else, one thing remained unwavering: her determination to get Marten to the monastery at Montserrat and into the hands of Merriman Foxx.

  The trouble was that in setting Marten up she had also set up the president. It was a bad situation, and both men knew it. They also knew they had no choice but to proceed. To them Foxx was the key to everything. What he knew they had to find out: the specifics of the plan against the Muslim states, when and where it was to begin, the names of those involved, and for Marten in particular, what he had done to Caroline Parsons. Moreover, the president not only wanted to know the details, he insisted they have them written down—a notepad, scratch paper, anything would do—dated and signed by Foxx. It was a document that, once in hand, would allow him to come out of the shadows without fear. By the time the Secret Service, a CIA team, or Spanish intelligence reached him he would have placed calls (and hopefully faxed copies) to the secretaries-general of NATO and the United Nations and to the editors-in-chief of The Washington Post and The New York Times. Nothing would be kept back, none of it politically couched, including the planned assassinations in Warsaw. It would be news that would explode across the world in seconds, and its ramifications would be enormous—economically, politically, and because of the horror of what it had promised, emotionally. But it had to be done, it was far too grave and far-reaching for anything but the truth.

  So, trap or not, and hugely dangerous and immensely difficult as it might be, the attempt to reach the monastery at Montserrat had to be made.

  That left only the next problem.

  How to get there.

  And what to do, when, and if, they did.

  64

  • CHANTILLY, FRANCE, 6:44 A.M.

  Victor stood in a thick jungle of trees three hundred feet back from the target area. The barrel of his M14 rifle rested in the V of a wooden makeshift monopod and was pointed through the gray mist of early morning toward the thoroughbred practice track called "Coeur de la Forêt." Even in the chill he was comfortable. He was a professional killer and this was what he did. And what they asked him to do. And what they fully expected he would do. Not could do, as if he were a low-level employee, but what he would fully execute as a marksman, as a professional.

  "Victor." Richard's calm and soothing voice came over his headset.

  "Yes, Richard."

  "How are you feeling?"

  "Fine."

  "Not cold or damp."

  "No, Richard. Just fine."

  "The horses and jockeys are just leaving the training facility. In approximately thirty-five seconds they will be at the start of the practice track. Once there they will get their final instructions from the trainer. Ten to fifteen seconds after that the practice race will begin. It should take them about seventy seconds to reach where you are. Are you alright with that, Victor?"

  "Yes, Richard."

  "Afterward you know what to do."

  "Yes, Richard."

  "Thank you, Victor."

  "No, Richard, thank you."

  • BARCELONA, 6:50 A.M.

  Barefoot, pant legs rolled up, coffee cups in hand, and looking like early-rising tourists on holiday, Nicholas Marten and President of the United States John Henry Harris walked across the wet sand of low tide watching the first light of day break over the Mediterranean. Above and behind them was an outcropping of rocky cliffs that shielded the desolate stretch of beach where they were from the dirt road they had come in on. An X on a map would suggest they were about fifteen miles north of Barcelona somewhere between Costa Daurada to the south and Costa Brava to the north.

  Isolated and away from the city proper, it gave them a brief respite, one carefully calculated to give the security forces time to fully execute their roadblocks and checkpoints, and then, coming up empty, to hopefully stand down or at least to ease their presence and let the city come back to some semblance of normal while they regrouped, re-worked their tactics and brought in more manpower. And it was just that window Marten and the president would use to make their move toward Montserrat. Both knew that once that second wave began, the scope and size of it would be unprecedented. John Henry Harris was not simply a missing person, he was a missing president of the United States, and the determination of the Secret Service, CIA, FBI, NSA, Spanish intelligence and Spanish police forces to find him and bring him to what they assumed was safety would make his, and therefore Marten's, chance of escaping zero at best.

  * * *

  Marten glanced back. In the dim morning light he could see the protective cliffs above them and the small turnaround at the end of the road where the black Mercedes limousine that had brought them there was parked. Standing beside it watching them was its dark-suited middle-aged driver, the affable Miguel Balius, a Barcelonan raised in Australia who had later returned to his native city. It was Balius's keen knowledge of Barcelona's streets and alleys that had helped them avoid the maze of police checkpoints and roadblocks and get them to the remote beach where they were now. That they had come this far was due to Balius's seemingly wholly naïve creativity, Marten's original idea, and Demi's smooth execution of it.

  They had reached the Hotel Regente Majestic at 4:50 A.M. and gone immediately inside, Demi to the front desk and Marten and President Harris into the men's restroom just off the lobby, where they had cleaned up and waited. What Marten had suggested in the last moments before they reached the hotel was, if it worked, outrageous, but no more outrageous than the situation they were in—essentially trapped inside the city of Barcelona while Spanish security forces demanded identification from nearly everyone trying to leave it.

  Mart
en's idea had come from the simple reality of their situation—they had to remain free of the massive net surrounding them and at the same time get to the mountain monastery at Montserrat, arriving sometime around noon. To that end he created a scenario that with luck and if played properly just might work. Demi began it the moment they entered the hotel when she went directly to the front desk asking to see the concierge. The following is what she told Marten and the president she had said:

  "My two cousins came in on an early-morning flight from New York for a family reunion. I went to meet them at the airport. It took a half hour to find them because the airline lost their luggage and they were off trying to locate it. They never did. It's still lost. On the way here we were caught up in whatever dreadful thing is going on in the city. It took an hour to get through one checkpoint. We had to show identification, everything."

  "The authorities thought they had some terrorists trapped in a hotel not far from here," the concierge informed her. "They escaped. Or that's what we've been told, but they are still looking for them and that is the reason for all the chaos. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience."