The Machiavelli Covenant (53 page)

Lowe looked to Bill Strait. "How many men do we have in the tunnels now?"

"About sixty. Another thirty or so when the other teams crack through. That many more when the rest of Captain Diaz's team and our ops hit the tunnel floor over there. The CIA ops from Madrid are on the ground now and have been assigned coordinates along the top of the main shaft. Agentes Rurales teams who know the area are assisting them to find other ways in. Satellite coverage for digital visual photographic and thermal imaging won't happen for another ninety minutes until the satellite is overhead. With the night and this weather we're not going to get much if anything from the visual imaging. It's the thermal imaging, the heat signature coming from bodies on the ground or exiting the shafts, we will be looking to recognize."

Lowe was openly upset and raising his voice. "So basically this whole operation is at the mercy of a few drilling machines and several hundred men with microphones, night goggles, and picks and shovels."

"I'm afraid we're in a hot pursuit situation here, sir. You run with what you have, lots of bodies and old-world technology."

"Where the hell are those hundred more Secret Service people coming from Paris?"

Strait looked from Lowe to Marshall. "On Spanish soil now. Wheels down here at new ETA 9:40. Gentlemen, every team here is professional, CNP, CIA, USSS. If the president is down there he will be found."

"I'm sure he will. And thank you," Marshall said, then took Lowe by the arm, and they walked off toward the Chinook.

"You're pushing it, Jake," he said firmly. "Take it easy, huh? Just take it easy."

•
THE AMPHITHEATER OF
LA IGLESIA
DENTRO DE LA MONTAÑA,
THE CHURCH WITHIN
THE MOUNTAIN, 9:20 P.M.

Demi stood at the edge of the crowd, as unobtrusively as possible photographing the ceremony taking place in the Aldebaran circle where the sixty monks knelt at its outer edge, heads bowed, chanting in the same indecipherable language as before. Behind them the three bonfires still roared, their embers drifting up into an eerie night sky; the full moon all but lost in the clouds of an approaching storm that announced its ferocity with a spectacular lightning show over the distant valley.

Her white dress flowing around her, Cristina sat like a goddess on a simple wooden throne in the circle's center as, one by one, scarlet-gowned children came to her from the darkness beyond the bonfires, each waiting his or her turn and then slowly and reverently walking into the firelight to approach her. Each child carried something live, a dog or cat or, in the case of several of the
older children, an owl, leashed and tethered to a leather arm gauntlet like a falcon, for blessing.

And bless them Cristina did, smiling compassionately and lovingly to each, then saying something unheard and kissing them on one check and then the other, and afterward passing her hand over the creature they had brought, reciting some kind of short prayer as she did. Her words, barely audible, spoken in the same language used by the monks and by Beck and Luciana. Afterward the child moved off, drifting into the darkness beyond the bonfires and the next took its place. All around the adults watched, silent and spellbound, while below, at the edge of the firelight, Luciana and the Reverend Beck stood witness, as if divine shepherds overseeing their flock.

Demi was utterly perplexed. She wondered how the sign of Aldebaran on her mother's drawing, the Aldebaran thumb tattoos on Merriman Foxx, the late Dr. Lorraine Stephenson, Cristina, Luciana, and probably Reverend Beck, fit with all this. Especially this simple touching children's ceremony that blessed dogs and cats and owls. What spirits had Beck been calling forth from the night? What role did Cristina play? What was the significance of any of it?

Maybe it was, as Beck had said, that the coven and its rituals were harmless and there was nothing that couldn't be shown to the world. If so why had she been drugged for her journey here? What had Foxx wanted with Nicholas Marten that involved any of this? What of her mother's disappearance? Her father's warning? Or that given her by the armless Giacomo Gela? And what had he witnessed so many years ago that caused his captors to so heinously mutilate him? Moreover what was the connection of the sign of Aldebaran to the centuries-old cult of
Aradia Minor
and its traditions: blood oaths,
sacrifices of living creatures, human torture? Where was its several-hundred-member audience, the powerful order called the
Unknowns?

Had Gela been wrong or even crazy, a bitter armless octogenarian living alone for decades who had fabricated a secret, ancient culture upon which to blame his own condition? Demi saw no sign of any of it. Just families and children and animals. What was here to be feared?

•
9:35 P.M.

Hector and José were already on the tunnel floor, their flashlights pointed upward. Fifty feet above them Amado worked in a tight, sharply sloping chimney helping Miguel ease Hap down, his arm, by necessity, taken from its makeshift sling. The constant throbbing in his wounded shoulder eased somewhat by a pain pill reluctantly taken.

•
9:40 P.M.

The three were still twenty feet above the tunnel floor when they felt the earth begin to shake. Seconds later they heard it. One, two, three, four, and then five. The thundering chop of helicopters coming in and passing overhead at a low level.

Miguel looked at Hap. "More police? CIA?"

"Secret Service," Hap said coldly. "Flown in from Paris."

"How do you know?"

"Because it's my damn job to know!" Hap flared. It was the last thing they needed, more bodies working against them, agents thinking they were helping when they were doing just the opposite. "I would have called them in myself." He looked at Amado below him, "How much further?"

"Not much," Miguel said, then grinned. "The drop is still enough to kill you."

"Next time bring a ladder."

•
9:43 P.M.

"Laser!" Marten said in a hoarse whisper, pulling the president back against the tunnel wall in the inky black.

"Where?"

"Ahead."

"I didn't see it."

"It went on, then off. Either a mistake or they were hoping to get lucky. The last thing they want to do is give themselves away."

"Listen."

Once again came the sound of a drill cutting through stone.

"It's closer," the president's voice was little more than a whisper.

"A second rig?"

Abruptly the sound came again. This one closer than the other.

"And a third."

"They're in front of us with lasers," Marten said. "How far away or how many, we don't know. They're closing in behind us. And then there was that sound before. Like rocks slapped together. What the hell that was, I don't know either."

Suddenly the president raised what was left of the torch. Little more than a glowing ember. He lifted it high and close to Marten's face so that he could see him clearly. "You gave me your word that we would get out of here and that I would address the convention at Aragon. Damn it to hell, we are not going to let them take us now. I'm holding you to your promise."

"Mr. President, take that damn stick out of my face," Marten glared at him.

President Harris stared, then lowered the glowing pick handle. "I'm sorry."

Suddenly there was another flash of laser through the tunnel. Then a second, held longer this time. They could hear the distant echo of footsteps, men moving quickly along the tunnel toward them. From behind came another screech of drill. It held for ten seconds, then its pitch suddenly rose. Immediately the whine diminished.

"They've broken through," the president said.

"Give me that," Marten said quickly, and grabbed the glowing torch, then started back the way they had come.

"What are you doing?"

"Looking for help, Cousin. Looking for help."

•
9:45 P.M.

Marten ran along the track as fast as he dared in the dark, the glowing pick handle held near the tunnel floor, the president on his heels. Then the president caught up.

"Fifty, a hundred yards back, the torch flared." Marten kept moving, his voice barely a whisper. "Just a little. Not enough to think about at the time but there was an air current of some sort. Maybe a crack in the wall big enough we can squeeze into until those laser guys pass, then we
go back the way they came, the way we were headed. If they got in, there's a way out."

Behind them a shot of laser light bounced off the tunnel walls. Now they could hear the echo of voices in front of them. Marten ran on another twenty yards, then slowed. "Somewhere here," he stopped and ran the glowing stick along the tunnel floor and then up the walls.

Nothing.

Another shot of laser bounced off the tunnel ceiling behind them. From the darkness in front came the steady drum of running feet.

"Come on," the president breathed.

"Nothing. Maybe I was wrong."

Marten started to move on when suddenly the torch flared up.

"There! You found it!" the president said.

Marten twisted back and pushed the brand toward the wall. The flame rose higher. Then they saw it. A small, three foot square opening in the tunnel wall just where it met the floor and all but obscured by the wooden ties of the ore-car tracks.

Marten moved closer. The flame rose higher still.

Another blast of laser came from behind them. This time it held longer, lighting up the entire shaft a half mile back. The sound of men running toward them from the other direction became more distinct.

"Get in," Marten commanded. The president dropped to all fours and squeezed into the cutout. A heartbeat later Marten followed. Like that they were gone. The tunnel where they had been, black as coal. As if they were never there.

•
9:50 P.M.

Marten and the president pushed farther back into the cutout. One shoved breathlessly up against the other. Two full-size men crammed like rag dolls into an impossibly tiny space.

They could hear the rush of feet approaching in the tunnel outside. The sound got louder, then louder still. Then the men were just outside the opening only inches away. In another instant they were past it. There had easily been twenty, maybe more. Within the next minute they would come full on the force coming toward them from the opposite direction. They would confer for precious brief seconds, then each head back the way they had come. Checking and double-checking the route they had so swiftly passed through.

"Move! Now!" the president whispered, and started to shove out toward the tunnel.

"No." Marten pulled him back. "If there are more still coming we'll walk right into them."

"What do we do?"

"Wait."

"We don't have time. They'll turn back in a second when they run into the other squad. We have to take the chance and go now."

"Alright." Marten started to move, then suddenly stopped as the glow on the near-dead brand flared again. "Hold it," he moved the glowing pick handle to the side of the cutout. The glow became brighter. He
blew on it and got a flame, then raised the torch and looked around.

"This place has been made with a different kind of tool than was used to dig the main tunnel. And it wasn't done eighty years ago either."

The president perked and followed the torch as Marten moved it around. "It's an air-transfer duct."

"Why? And from where to here?"

"Hand me the torch."

Marten did. The president turned up on an elbow and crawled farther back into the cutout.

"What do you see?"

"There's a steel vent, maybe two by three. It drops straight down into what looks like another shaft underneath."

"Can we fit through the vent?" Marten asked.

There was sudden noise in the tunnel outside. They heard the oncoming rush of feet, the snap of orders being given. The search team was coming back fast.

"We don't have a choice."

•
9:55 P.M.

The wind was rising, the heavy clouds beginning to spit rain, as an increasingly anxious Jake Lowe turned up the collar of his parka and pushed past Spanish police hastily erecting a protective tent over the command post. He reached the control area and moved in to look over the shoulders of Bill Strait and Captain Diaz.

For the last minutes he had been standing back, watching the communications teams monitor exchanges between the CIA, Secret Service, and CNP units in the tunnels and their counterparts scattered
over the rock formations above. More than once he'd looked over at Jim Marshall, huddled to the side, chatting and drinking coffee with the presidential medical team waiting for the word that would put them into action. But that word had not come. Nothing seemed to be happening. A sudden shared laugh by Marshall and the medical crew pushed him over and sent him moving toward Strait and Diaz.

Was he the only one who was concerned about what would happen if the president suddenly turned up alive and well and talking and refusing to be taken to the CIA jet? Not only would Warsaw and their entire plan for the Middle East be dead in the water, they—all of them, from the vice president on down—ran the very real risk of being arrested and tried for attempting to overthrow the government. The penalty if convicted was death.