The Machiavelli Covenant (39 page)

The sketch and the word beneath it combined with what her father had written, sent a gnawing chill through her. Immediately she went to her purse and took out her
mother's photograph. For the thousandth time Demi studied her face. This time her eyes seemed far more intense, as if she were deliberately staring right at her. Again Demi read her father's note. Again she looked at the drawing. Again she stared at the word. Once more the chill came.

The photograph, the note, the sketch, the word.

It was then she realized that a huge part of herself was missing and had been for all these years. It was a deep, almost overwhelming sense that she would never be whole until she learned if her mother was alive or dead, and the truth of what had really happened. In that moment too she wondered if somehow all of this, coming now when she was nearly of age, had been sent to her by her mother as a way of trying to communicate with her, to give her clues to her fate.

The moment was a turning point in her life, one in which she swore to her mother that she would do whatever it took and for however long it took—and at whatever cost—to find out what had happened. It was a pact that was intensely personal and for the two of them only. One she vowed never to share with another human being. And to this moment never had.

"You have been very quiet, Demi. Is anything wrong?"

The immediacy of Reverend Beck's voice startled her, and she looked up to see him looking at her over the seat-back. Now Luciana turned to look at her too, her green eyes suddenly stark and penetrating.

"I'm quite well, thank you," Demi smiled.

"Good," Luciana said without expression, "we still have far to go."

•
12:10 P.M.

Miguel Balius parked the limousine behind a row of trees between the tiny Montserrat-Aeri railway stop and the small cable car terminal where the green-and-yellow gondolas began the trip that took them straight up over rocky cliffs to an upper terminal nearly two thousand feet above. Then, at Marten's request, he locked his traveling bag with its electronic notebook, tape recorder, and personal effects in the trunk, and walked his newfound "cousins"—President Harris once again without his toupee and wearing glasses and the big floppy hat he had borrowed from Demi the night before—to the path leading to the lower terminal. There, in the shadow of a large tree, he stopped and watched them go down, walking separately toward the terminal as if they were strangers and had just come from the railway station.

Marten bought his ticket first, round trip from the lower terminal to the top and then back down again. A moment later the president did the same and then followed Marten out to the platform to wait with a handful of tourists for the car above to come down. It arrived in minutes. Its doors opened and a dozen passengers got out. Then those waiting entered, a uniformed worker closed the door, and the green-and-yellow car began its ascent. The entire time there had not been so much as a glance or a word between them. It hadn't been necessary. They already knew what was next. It had been worked through at the crumbling stone building by the stream in the minutes after Miguel
had most willingly, respectfully, and enthusiastically "been brought into the family."

"The restaurant is called Abat Cisneros and is part of the Hotel Abat Cisneros. The service door to outside is down a corridor and directly past the restrooms. Once through it there is a pathway directly outside," Miguel said definitively, then picked up a sharp piece of rock to draw a rough diagram of the monastery complex on the old building's dirt floor, carefully scratching in the details of what he was talking about.

"This way leads down to the area where they bring in the supplies; the other way goes up and around a sharp turn hidden by trees. About thirty yards farther are the ruins of the chapel I was telling you about," He drew an X on the floor to mark the ruins. "It's overgrown and hard to see even from the path. But it's there and if you can get Foxx to it, it will serve your purposes quite well."

"Good," Marten said, then looked to the president. "Assuming Demi was telling the truth, she, Beck, and Luciana should be at the monastery with Foxx when we get there. We can expect their first step will be to try and find me and deliver me to Foxx. That is unless Demi's told them about you. If she did, they'll be looking for you as well, and that changes things altogether."

"It doesn't change anything." President Harris was resolute. "If Foxx is there we have to find out what he knows. If he's alerted my 'friends,' we'll deal with that when it happens. There is no other choice."

"Alright," Marten accepted the president's tenacity, "but at least we can make it a little more difficult for them. We go to the cable car terminal separately. Buy our tickets singly. Tourists who don't know each other.
From what Miguel says the gondola is small, people are crowded together. If for some reason you're recognized and a fuss is made I'm still free to get to Foxx on my own, while you're left to your—" Marten let go a half-grin—" 'political wiles' to get out of it. If nothing happens and we reach the upper terminal, we still go off individually." Immediately he looked to Miguel, "Once I get to the monastery, where would the most logical place be for someone to find me?"

"The plaza in front of the basilica."

"Okay," Marten turned back to the president. "Most likely it's Beck who will do it. If Demi did tell them about you and he's looking for both of us he'll be disappointed and wonder if she told him the truth or if you simply chose not to come. In either case he will be confronting me alone.

"He might mention Demi, he might not, but he'll break the ice with small talk, then bring up Foxx, say that he's there and suggest the two of us meet to talk over the discord still lingering from what happened in Malta. Just what that will entail and where we don't know, but the certainty is they'll be trying to run the show, which is something we don't want. My response should be that if the good doctor wants to talk to me it should be in a public place. I'll suggest the restaurant. For lunch, a drink, whatever. In the meantime—"

"I will have gone directly there, made certain where the men's restroom is and the exit door to the outside beyond it that Miguel described." Now it was the president's turn to smile. They had been together for less than a day and already they were finishing each other's thoughts and sentences. "With luck I will have found the pathway and the ruined chapel, then come back and taken a table near
the door and, head down, a beverage in hand, be reading a newspaper or tour guide when you and Dr. Foxx enter."

"You will also have purchased the appropriate items from the menu."

"Of course."

"You're a good student, Cousin," Marten said, then looked to Miguel. "Once we're done with Foxx we're going to have to get out and fast, before he's found. The cable car is too slow and confining, and besides, we might have to wait for it. What we need is for you to be waiting at the monastery to drive us out. The trouble is the limo. At some point, if they haven't already, the police will have its description. Right now it's pretty well hidden, but bringing it out in the open and up the long road to the monastery is too risky."

"I will get us another vehicle, Cousin Harold."

"How?"

Miguel smiled, "As I said, I have been to the monastery many times. I have friends who work there, I also have relatives who live nearby. Whatever it is, I will have something waiting." Again he picked up the rock and squatted down next to his sketch of the monastery's layout. "This is where you will come out," he said, scratching a large X into the dirt, "this is where I will be," he scratched a second X, then looked up. "Any questions?"

"No. Thank you, cousin," the president said genuinely.

"You're welcome, sir," he said. At that moment a great and magnificent grin burst across Miguel's face like a dazzling ray of sunshine. In that moment he knew he had just become a liftetime member of their exclusive and very tiny, "cousins' club."

Marten glanced across the gondola as it climbed rapidly toward the upper terminal. Demi's floppy hat tilted to
one side, President Harris stood alone on the far side of the car, gazing out the window. A somewhat eccentric everyday tourist riding up with a half dozen other everyday tourists, most all of whom had their faces pressed to the glass as he did, watching the terminal below quickly become little more than a dot in the distance.

•
12:20 P.M.

Demi felt the rise of her pulse as the Monasterio Benedictino Montserrat van reached the top of the long mountain road and made a sharp turn into the monastery's restricted parking area. Through the windows she could now see up close the grouping of sand-colored stone buildings she had glimpsed from far below. No longer in miniature, it still looked like an isolated fortress-city, untouchable against the half-mile-high limestone cliffs and encompassing among other things its famed basilica, a museum, restaurant, hotel, and private apartments.

Abruptly the van's passenger door slid open. A young priest stood outside in the bright sun.

"Welcome to Montserrat," he said in English.

Moments later he was leading them across a plaza filled with tourists and then up a series of steps toward the basilica. Beck carried a small overnight bag; the witch, Luciana, her large black purse; Demi, a small equipment bag with photographic supplies and a smaller bag inside it holding personal toiletries, and two professional cameras thrown over one shoulder; one, a 35mm Nikon, the other, a Canon digital.

The priest led them under a stone arch and into the basilica's inner courtyard, which was packed with more tourists. A clock high on the basilica's tower read 12:25. They were precisely on time. Immediately Demi thought of Cousin Jack and Cousin Harold. She wondered where they were—if they were still with the limousine driver and on their way here, or—she felt her stomach clench in a knot. What if they'd been stopped at one of the roadblocks? What then? What would she do? What would Beck?

"This way, please," the priest led them down a long porticoed corridor and past a series of arched stone panels inset with heraldic symbols and what appeared to be religious inscriptions written in Latin. Then she saw it, and her heart caught in her throat. Encased in one of the last panels was the stone sculpture of an early Christian Crusader. Chain mail covering his head and neck, he rested an arm on a triangular shield. Carved into the shield was the balled cross of the Aldebaran. This was the first time she had seen it anywhere outside of books or drawings or the tattoos on the left thumbs of members of the coven. She wondered how long the piece had been there and who else over the years or even centuries had seen it and recognized the sign and knew its meaning.

"Through here," the priest turned them down another corridor, this one narrower than the first and lined with row after row of flickering votive candles. Where before there had been numbers of tourists, now there were few. With every step they were getting farther and farther from the center of activity.

Demi heard her cameras click together as they touched. At the same time she felt an icy chill touch the nape of her neck and then creep across her shoulders.
With it came the sound of her father's voice whispering the warning he had written to her about her mother so many years earlier—
Do not, under any circumstances try to learn her fate
.

Fearfully she looked back. Except for the rows of flickering candles the walkway behind them was empty.

Five more steps and the priest stopped at a heavy wooden door cut into a stone archway. Immediately he turned to a wooden panel set into the stonework next to the door and slid it back. Inside was an electronic keypad. He punched in four numbers, pressed the pound key, then slid the panel closed and turned an iron knob on the door. It opened easily, and he gestured for them to enter. They did and he left, closing the door behind him.

Compared to the noonday brightness outside, the place seemed inordinately dark. Slowly their eyes became accustomed to it. They were in an office of some kind with a number of ornate high-backed wooden chairs lining one wall and a massive bookcase against the wall opposite. An enormous wooden desk and large leather chair behind it sat near a closed door at the far end. The ceiling was high and arched, while the walls themselves appeared to be of the same aged stone as the monastery's complex of buildings. The floor was the same, worn shiny in places by the foot traffic of people and time.

"Wait here please, Demi," Beck said quietly, and then led Luciana toward the door at the end of the room. Reaching it, he knocked, and then they entered and Beck closed the door behind them.