The Machiavelli Covenant (17 page)

"He may be a conservative, gentlemen, but he's far too independent for us. It's our fault we didn't see it from the beginning. But we didn't and now he's out there, a time bomb if he can find a way to expose us. On the other hand there's not a lot he can do. He can't use electronic communications, because he'll know that all cell-phone, BlackBerry, and 'hardline' traffic, voice or text, is being monitored for electronic intercept by every security agency in our arsenal and Spain's. He tries to call anywhere, his location will be pinpointed before he gets ten seconds into his conversation. That communication will immediately be shut down in the event he's being made to do it against his will, and Spanish intel or our guys will pick him up in minutes if not seconds.

"So with no electronic communication, that means he's on the streets looking for a place to hide until he can figure out what to do. Next to maybe a couple of rock or movie stars, his is the most recognizable face on the planet. Where the hell does he think he can go that someone won't recognize him and shout about it one way or another? When that happens, the police and Spanish intelligence will show up in a heartbeat. They'll get him out of sight fast and call us. Then Hap and Jim and I will go to collect him. No matter what he says, within the hour he'll be back here, with everyone believing the death of his wife, the pressure of the campaign, of the office, of the whole thing here, finally just
got to him and he lost it. He'll be examined by the medical staff who will recommend a little R & R, a breather in the countryside before Monday's NATO meeting in Warsaw. That's where he will be taken, and then taken care of. A heart attack or something. A sad and tragic ending to a proud and extremely promising presidency."

"All well and good," President Harris's close friend Evan Byrd said. "But what if this is not his own doing? What if he
is
a victim of some terrible foul play?"

"Then we hope and pray for the very best, don't we?" Lowe said evenly. "But don't count on it, Evan. If you'd seen him on Air Force One when he turned us down, you'd know what I meant. No, this is his show and he's going to try to crush us. How, I don't know, but he's going to try. We just have to tighten the screws and make sure we get him first."

•
THE WESTIN PALACE HOTEL, APRIL 7, 11:40 A.M.

"Good morning, Victor."

"I was wondering when you were going to call, Richard."

Victor paced up and down in his underwear, his cell phone to his ear, his room curtains drawn against the brightness of midday. What was left of his room-service breakfast, coffee, cereal, ham and eggs and toast rested on a tray near the door. The TV was on in silence, tuned to a cartoon channel.

"You don't worry about that, do you? I always call
when I say I will. Maybe sometimes a little bit later than you'd like, but I always do call, don't I, Victor?"

"Yes, Richard, you do."

"Did you go to the Hotel Ritz last night as I asked?"

"Yes, of course. I ordered a drink in the lounge just as you said and then took the elevator to the second floor with some other guests. Afterward I went up to the third floor, alone. You asked me to try and get to the fourth floor, where the president was staying. The elevator was blocked from going past the third floor, and the stairs to the fourth were controlled by what seemed to be security people. When they asked what I was doing I said I was just walking around while I was waiting for a friend to meet me for a drink. They said I couldn't go upstairs and so I thanked them politely and left. Then I went down and finished my drink as you instructed and went back to my hotel. That's where I am now."

"The security people did see you."

"Oh yes. But there was no trouble about it."

"Good, Victor. Very good." Richard paused. "I have another assignment for you."

"What is it, Richard?"

"I want you to go to France, to a race track outside of Paris."

"Alright."

"Pack now and go down to the desk and check out. When you do an envelope will be waiting. Inside will be an airline ticket to Paris and instructions on what to do when you get there."

"Is the ticket first-class?"

"Of course, Victor."

"And you want me to go now?"

"Yes, Victor. As soon as we hang up."

"Alright, Richard."

"Thank you, Victor."

"No, Richard, thank you."

•
11:45 A.M.

A tall, slim, balding man wearing glasses and dressed in a black sweater, blue jeans, and running shoes sat at a back table in a small café in the center of Madrid's old city, a mile or more from the Hotel Ritz. He sipped strong coffee and watched people begin to filter in for lunch. That he spoke Spanish fluently helped because it made him seem more at ease and less foreign than he was. So far, as had been the case throughout the morning as he had walked the streets trying to get his bearings, not one person had given him as much as a second glance. Hopefully it would remain that way and no one would realize that the lone man sitting among them was John Henry Harris, the president of the United States.

Growing up, Johnny Harris had heard his late father's double-barreled admonition often enough. The first part was, "Always think on your feet and never be afraid to act if the need arises." Part two followed immediately: "And just because things seem comfortable don't think things can't change in a hurry because they not only can, they usually will."

If that constant, often grating homily had helped prepare him to take action against the cruel and sudden turn of events here in Madrid, two other pieces of his education had helped almost as well. First, as a young man he had worked on farms and ranches in his hometown of Salinas, California, where he learned to speak Spanish to the point where he shifted easily and comfortably
between it and English and where he had a hand in almost everything, including the flying of crop dusters, hence his Secret Service code name. Second, as an adjunct to farming, he had been a carpenter and later a building contractor, working primarily in the renovation of older commercial buildings in Salinas and then farther north in San Jose. In result, he was familiar with the nuts and bolts of construction: structural and mechanical requirements; electrical, plumbing, heating, and air-conditioning; and the use of space as it applied to function and design. Older buildings took special care, especially when it came to incorporating central heating and air-conditioning systems into the original architecture and fitting them into spaces not initially designed for them. The Ritz Madrid had opened in 1910. Since then it had been renovated any number of times. When the current heating and air-conditioning system had been added he didn't know. What he did know was that the Ritz was a large hotel, which meant the ducting for central heating and air-conditioning would be substantial—the main ducts themselves might well be four to six feet square, with side ducts probably in the neighborhood of two by three feet. The side ducts would be concealed in drop ceilings in the hallways and in certain individual areas of the guest rooms. The main shafts would, or should, have built-in ladders to access the interior of the system from basement to roof.

He knew the Secret Service advance team would have checked those shafts and made certain they were secure long before the presidential party arrived. It meant they would be locked at the specific points of entry: the access panels on the roof and in the basement. What they would have had no reason to consider was that at both roof and basement those same access panels would have internal
safety latches to prevent anyone from becoming trapped inside. Meaning the panels could be opened from the inside and would lock again automatically once someone had come out. Considering any commercial building's need for usable space—and the Ritz, as an old renovated building, would be no different—it was more than probable that the bottom of the air ducts would be incorporated into already existent areas of the basement, a storage area or furnace room, perhaps even the laundry.

It was this knowledge and this assumption that Johnny Harris had counted on to make his escape. It had taken nearly two hours and been considerably more difficult than he had expected. The side ducts had been smaller than he'd anticipated and he'd made a number of turns that led to dead ends that had to be retraced backwards in the dark. He'd used up several books of matches lighting his way and was beginning to think he might be trapped in there forever until he finally found a main duct and started down.

Several knuckles and a part of his shin had been scraped raw, and every bit of him was strained and sore from the sheer physical effort, but nonetheless his main sense of it had been right and it had worked—the principal air shaft opened through an access panel into a large supply room in the building's cellar. Once out, the panel had automatically locked closed behind him, and he'd walked down a short, dimly lit hallway to an area near the loading ramp, where he'd hidden behind a large walk-in freezer until a produce truck arrived at a little after three in the morning. He'd watched carefully, biding his time as two men unloaded it. Then, when they went to the truck's cab to sign the delivery manifest, he slipped into the back and hid behind a stack of lettuce crates until the driver got in and drove off, passing both his own Secret Service agents
and Spanish security posted outside. The next delivery stop was another hotel several blocks away. Here he waited until the driver went inside, then simply jumped down and walked off in the darkness.

Now, with the time closing on noon, he sat, still unrecognized, sipping coffee in the small old-town café, his wallet in his back pocket—a wallet that held his California driver's license, personal credit cards, and nearly a thousand euros in cash, and minus the toupee no one except his personal barber had any idea he wore—fully aware of the chaos that would have exploded once it had been discovered he was missing and trying to decide how best to get from where he was to where he was going without someone recognizing him and sounding the alarm.

•
HOTEL RITZ, 11:50 A.M.

The entire fourth floor was a screaming beehive as Hap Daniels had known it would be. White House Press Secretary Dick Greene was about to make a special statement to the crush of world media who had swarmed the building, adding chaos to the throng of reporters in the White House press pool already following the president on his European tour. Word had been leaked that the president was no longer in Madrid, that he had secretly been taken to an undisclosed location in the middle of the night after a credible terrorist threat was intercepted by Spanish intelligence. As the Secret Service senior official supervising the investigation,
Daniels had already been in contact with George Kellner, CIA chief of station Madrid, and Emilio Vasquez, the head of Spanish intelligence, setting up a joint task force that would coordinate their own bureaus with Spanish law enforcement authorities in an all-out, fullblown search for the president; one that would be designated a national security operation, meaning TOP SECRET on every level. Immediately afterward Daniels had been on a secure phone to the special agent in charge of the Secret Service field office at the U.S. embassy in Paris, asking that the Paris office go on full standby alert in the event additional bodies were needed in Madrid. Soon to be added to the chaotic stew was Ted Langway, an assistant director of the Secret Service at USSS headquarters in Washington, who was already en route to Madrid to liaise with Daniels and then to set up a twenty-four-hour communication with the director of the Secret Service in Washington who would in turn advise the secretary of U.S. Department of Homeland Security, under which the Secret Service now operated.

And then there was the rest, the trail that led Hap to the air-conditioning access panel in the drop ceiling of the presidential suite's bathroom.

A painstaking review of digital videos made by the roof-mounted security cameras showed a produce truck arriving at the hotel at 0302 hours. It had been stopped and searched by Secret Service agents and then cleared to enter the hotel. Security cameras in the hotel's underground parking area showed the same truck coming down a ramp and stopping at a loading dock at 0308 hours (eight minutes past three that morning).

A hotel worker and the truck driver unloaded several
cartons of produce and then went to the front of the truck, where the hotel worker signed the delivery manifest. In that moment a vague shadowlike movement was seen near the rear of the truck. It began near the top of the screen, coming from the area of a walk-in freezer, then approached the rear of the truck and went out of view. A moment later the hotel worker stepped away from the truck, and the driver got in and drove away. Security cameras outside the building caught the vehicle as it left the building, turned onto a side street, and disappeared from view.

"Somebody got into the truck while the hotel worker went to talk to the driver. Whoever it was was still in the truck when it left," Hap Daniels had barked in response to what he saw. The vehicle's driver had since been taken into custody by the CNI and had given them the location of his delivery stops immediately after he had left the Ritz.

Meantime, the Secret Service and hotel officials had traced the phantom's progress backward from the truck across to a large walk-in freezer, then to the dimly lit hallway behind it, searching every room and corridor that led from it. Within minutes they'd found a large closed storage area and inside it a main heating and air-conditioning shaft that led to the roof, with side ducting leading to every room on every floor of the building. That the access door to the shaft was locked and had been checked and verified secure by the advance Secret Service team and then checked and verified once again just before the president arrived seemed to rule out the possibility that anyone had gone in that way—using the shafts to get to the presidential suite and kidnap the president and take him back out the same way—
especially when the video cameras had caught a lone shadow entering the truck.