The Machiavelli Covenant (25 page)

"I found out later that she had had a legal document drawn up giving you access to her private papers and those of her husband, Congressman Parsons."

"That's true."

"I assume it was because she thought her husband and son had been deliberately killed and hoped maybe you could find out what happened."

Marten was stunned. "How did you know that?"

"For the moment suffice it to say it's the primary reason I'm here and seek your help. Both Caroline and Mike Parsons were my very close friends. Obviously Caroline trusted you a great deal and you were equally devoted to her, or," John Henry Harris half smiled, "you wouldn't have kicked the president of the United States out of the hospital room." Harris's smile faded and he hesitated as if he weren't sure exactly what to say next, or how much to reveal. Then Marten saw a look of deep resolve come over him, and he continued. "Mr. Marten, Mike Parsons and his son
were
murdered. So, I'm afraid, was Caroline."

Marten stared at him. "You know that for a fact?"

"Yes. No, I shouldn't say for a fact, but it was an admission by the people responsible for it."

"What people?"

"Mr. Marten, I want to trust you, I have to trust you because there is nowhere else for me to turn. And because of Caroline, I believe I can trust you." Again the president hesitated. Then Marten saw the resolve rise in him once more. "There was no terrorist threat. I left the hotel in Madrid on my own and under very difficult circumstances. You might say I escaped."

Marten didn't understand. "Escaped from what? From whom?"

"Our country is at war, Mr. Marten. A war that is being secretly waged against me and our country by a group of people at the highest levels of government. It is made up of my personal advisers and people in my own cabinet. People that I have known and trusted for years. But people who, in reality and as a group, are probably the most dangerous and powerful in the country. To my knowledge this is the closest thing to a coup d'état America has ever experienced. As a result, my life is in grave danger, and so is the future of not just our country but many other countries. Moreover, the window in which I can attempt to do something about it is extremely short. A little over three days at most. There is no longer anyone in the government that I can trust unconditionally. Nor do I have any friends or relatives this group won't have under close physical and electronic surveillance.

"That's why when I saw your photograph in the paper I knew I had to take the chance and find you. I had to have the confidence of someone and fortunately or unfortunately you are that person."

Marten was dumbfounded. Maybe in fiction the president of the United States came alone to your hotel room in the middle of the night and told you these things. Sat
down and told you the country was being taken over from the inside and that you were the only person in the world he could trust to help him stop it. Maybe in fiction all that happened, yet this was not fiction, this was real. The president was here, not three feet away and visibly drained, looking at you with bloodshot eyes and relating these awful things and asking for your help.

"What do you want me to do?" Marten said finally in a voice that was little more than a whisper.

"At this moment I'm not exactly sure. Except—" John Henry Harris took a long, deep breath that was closer to a sigh of absolute exhaustion, "—that for an hour or two I would ask you to keep guard. It's been a damned long day. I need to think. But I need to sleep first."

"I understand."

Absently the president ran a hand over a stubble beard that was beginning to show. "This is still Friday, the seventh, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good," the president smiled and Marten could see the fatigue begin to overtake him. As it did his eyes found Marten's. "Thank you," he said genuinely. "Thank you very much."

•
MADRID, 1:45 A.M.

"I don't know if it means anything, sir," Hap Daniels heard the voice of Secret Service intelligence specialist Sandra Rodriguez through his headset. "It's a pattern NSA analytical software picked up earlier this evening in Barcelona and was just evaluated."

"What pattern?" Daniels snapped. He'd been living on hope, black coffee, and adrenaline in the seemingly interminable hours since the president was first reported missing. Under emergency orders issued by the office of the vice president and overseen by George Kellner, CIA chief of station Madrid, the Secret Service had taken over a high level command post in a nondescript warehouse in Poblenou, an area of old factories and storehouses; a command post originally constructed by the CIA for their use in the event of a "terrorist issue" involving the U.S. embassy.

It was now approaching nineteen hours since the president had gone missing, and Daniels—encircled by the broad-shouldered bulldog Bill Strait, his deputy special agent in charge; the pale, expressionless Ted Langway, the Secret Service's assistant director in from
Washington, CIA-Madrid Station Chief George Kellner, and a half-dozen other Secret Service presidential detail supervisors—sat in the darkened central control room of that converted CIA warehouse in the glow of dozens of computer screens manned by Secret Service and CIA technical analysts culling information from what was now a massive top-secret worldwide intelligence operation.

Standing in the background like a steel shadow and pacing back and forth as if his wife were about to give birth and was taking too long to do it, was the president's chief political adviser, Jake Lowe. BlackBerry in hand and wearing a headset connected to whatever line Hap Daniels was on at the time, Lowe had another line ready at voice command that would instantly connect him to a secure phone at the United States embassy a half dozen miles away, where National Security Adviser Dr. James Marshall and White House Chief of Staff Tom Curran had established what they called "a working war room." There they were connected by secure phone to the basement of the White House in Washington, where Vice President Hamilton Rogers, Secretary of State David Chaplin, Secretary of Defense Terrence Langdon, and Air Force General Chester Keaton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had set up a war room of their own.

"We've got a record of twenty-seven phone calls placed between 2000 hours and 2040 hours this evening from six separate pay telephones all within a two-mile semicircle of the Barcelona-Sants Station," Rodriguez said. "They were paid for with a phone card purchased at a tobacco shop on Carrer de Robrenyo."

Barcelona had been a watch point ever since a small fire had broken out at a newspaper kiosk inside the city's
main railroad station early Friday evening. A fire, officials had quickly determined, that had been purposely set but with no apparent reason—theft, vandalism, or as a terrorist act—and that Spanish CNP officers on the scene were now calling a "diversionary tactic." But "diversionary" for what purpose? The only answer seemed to be that because the fire had erupted near an exit where the Spanish police were checking identifications someone inside the station—maybe the president, but more likely someone with a criminal record or on a terrorist watch list—had been trying to get past the police checkpoint. If so it may have worked because the officers at the door had, for a very brief time, left their post to investigate the fire and commotion inside.

"What's the connection to POTUS?" Daniels pushed, weariness and frustration beginning to override his generally composed demeanor.

"That's why I said I don't know if it means anything, sir."

"If
what
means anything? What the hell are you talking about?"

"The pattern, sir. The calls were placed to local hotels. One after the other as if someone were trying to locate a hotel guest but didn't know in which hotel the person was staying."

"Get me the name of the tobacco shop where the card was purchased, the numbers and locations of the phones the calls were placed from, and the names and numbers of the hotels that were called."

"Yes, sir."

"Thank you," Daniels punched a number on the keyboard in front of him. "Find out if Spanish intelligence did an intercept of public telephones in Barcelona between 2000 and 2040 tonight. If so, see if they have a
voice record of a series of calls made to area hotels in that time frame. I want to know if the calls were made by a man or a woman, what they were about, and what language the caller spoke in."

"Yes, sir."

"And do it fast."

"Yes, sir."

•
BARCELONA, RIVOLI JARDÍN HOTEL, 2:15 A.M.

Still party time. Horns, cars, motorcycles, unending traffic. People crowding the sidewalks. The sound of Brazilian and Argentine jazz filtering in through the double-glazed windows.

President Harris was asleep on the bed with Marten curled up on a small couch nearby when the chirp of Marten's cell phone woke them both.

"Who is it?" Harris was instantly awake and alert in the dark.

"I don't know."

The phone chirped again

"You better answer."

Marten picked the phone off a small table beside him and clicked on, "Hello."

"It's Demi," her voice was hushed and at the same time charged with immediacy. "You checked out. Where are you? I need to see you right away. I don't want to talk over the phone."

The president turned on a small bedside lamp just as Marten slid a hand over the telephone's receiver, "It's
a woman. She wants to see me now. Four hours ago I would have killed for this call."

Harris smiled.

"It's not that," he took his hand away and spoke into the phone. "Are you still at the Regente Majestic?"

"Yes."

"Hold on." Again he covered the phone and looked to Harris. "This has to do with Caroline's death. The woman's name is Demi Picard. She's a French journalist traveling with congressional chaplain Rufus Beck. They're both here in Barcelona." Marten hesitated for the smallest moment. "I don't know if you're aware but the reverend is a close friend of Dr. Merriman Foxx."

"The
Merriman Foxx?"

"Yes," Marten nodded, then spoke into the phone. "Give me your cell number, I'll call you back." Marten scribbled a number on a bedside table scratch pad. "Five minutes."

With that he clicked off and looked to the president, telling him what he had told Peter Fadden: that he had followed Foxx to his home in Malta and arranged to meet him by pretending to be a member of Congress-woman Baker's staff who needed some questions finalized before the subcommittee report was made final; that he met him in a restaurant and that Beck, another woman, and Demi Picard were with him; that he pressed him for information about his bio-weapons program and brought up the names of Caroline Parsons and her doctor, Lorraine Stephenson; and that he made up a story that Mike Parsons had left a memo questioning the veracity of his testimony. And then Foxx's angry reaction to everything.

"I found out early the next morning that both he and Reverend Beck had suddenly left Malta for places
unknown. Ms. Picard was leaving too and wanted nothing to do with me when I questioned her about it. I found out where she was going and followed her here to Barcelona.

"You said you knew Caroline had been murdered, Mr. President. I wonder if you know Foxx was behind it, he and the same Dr. Stephenson he denied knowing. They inoculated her with some kind of bacteria that killed her. I'm all but certain it was one of his experiments, a piece of his bio-weapons program that was supposed to be dead but wasn't the same thing Mike Parsons's committee was investigating when he and his son were killed. How Beck is involved I don't know, but he and Foxx are meeting somewhere near here soon, maybe even tomorrow. Demi knows more about it or she wouldn't be calling like this." Marten hesitated, trying to decide how to put the next part. He didn't have to, the president did it for him.

"You're thinking Dr. Foxx is part of the coup against me."

"Maybe, but there's no proof. All I know is that he was at the center of the subcommittee hearings denying his program was still in existence while at the same time he was still working his tricks on a live human being—Caroline Parsons."

"How is this Picard woman involved?"

"Supposedly she used Reverend Beck to get an introduction to Foxx. Her sister disappeared from Malta two years ago and she thought Foxx might open some doors that would help her to find out what happened, at least that's what she tells me."

"So she's incidental in all this."

"Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. But it's Foxx
who's central here. He not only knows the
how
but the
why
about Caroline's death, and both of those answers may have a lot to do with the things you're up against."

The president looked away, trying to digest it all. "If you're right, it's the part of the package that's missing, the specifics of what they're planning to do. I know I should be surprised about Chaplain Beck, but nothing surprises me now."

He turned back and Marten could see the anguish in his eyes. "They are planning something horrendous, Mr. Marten. More terrible, I think, than either you or I could imagine. Part of it I know, the rest I don't. The whole thing came out of the blue. It's a major breakdown on my part. I should have known something was happening and seen through it; I didn't. As I said earlier, the timetable for me to do anything about it is incredibly short. If I'm caught, it's nonexistent."