They left José at the door and entered the main laundry room. Three enormous open vatlike stainless-steel washers took up the center area, while a bank of stainless-steel dryers was positioned against a far wall. Opposite both was a large window that looked out to the other buildings. Just past it were the pressing machines, and beyond them, stainless-steel clothing racks that held rows of assorted Aragon Resort uniforms, most on hangers and arranged by size: a necessary convenience for the exclusive five-star resort that Hap knew had more than two hundred employees who had to be in clean, well-pressed uniforms at all times.

"Viene un hombre." A man is coming, José said from the doorway, then quickly ducked out of sight.

The president motioned to Hap and Marten, and the three slipped out of sight behind the pressing machines. Hap took a breath and slid out the Steyr machine pistol. Marten raised the Sig Sauer.

A moment later a large curly-haired man in white pants and a white T-shirt came in. He flicked on the overhead lights, then went to a control panel and pressed a series of buttons. Almost immediately the washing machines began to fill with water. The man adjusted a temperature gauge, then walked to the washers and looked in. Satisfied, he turned and left.

Hap waited a half beat then crossed the room, pressing up against the big window to look out. He saw the laundryman walk to a far building and go inside, closing the door behind him. Immediately Hap turned to the others.

"He'll be back soon enough. We need to move and fast."

• 7:00 A.M.

Dr. James Marshall watched Captain Diaz and one of Bill Strait's Spanish-speaking Secret Service agents interrogating Miguel in an isolated area near the rear of the command post. The questions went from Spanish to English back to Spanish, then to English again. Handcuffed and more than a little nervous, CNP guards standing coldly alongside, Hector and Amado sat on folding chairs only feet away, deliberately made party to Miguel's grilling. If Miguel didn't break they were betting one of the boys would.

Abruptly Marshall turned and went to Bill Strait. "He's not telling them anything."

"He will, or one of the kids will tell us more, but it'll take time so I wouldn't count on a sudden revelation."

Marshall was tired and angry and frustrated. He was also becoming increasingly anxious and didn't like it. It made him feel like Jake Lowe. "We've got a Spanish limousine driver with an Australian accent and two local teenagers. Then we've got a guy who looks like Hap, or maybe is Hap, someplace out there with the president and this Nicholas Marten. We've got every piece of hi-tech equipment and an army of bodies and aircraft flying around and now we've got daylight, and still nobody can find them. Why?"

"Maybe it's because they're still somewhere in the tunnels," Strait said. "Or because they're not here at all."

"What the hell does that mean?"

Strait turned and walked over to a map of the area. "This," he said, sweeping a hand over the mountaintops, "is where we've been looking. Over here," he moved his hand far to the right, "is the Aragon Resort, where the president was originally to speak this morning."

Marshall perked. "You think that's where he's going?"

"I don't know. What I do know is we haven't found him here. We know he was in the tunnels, and Hap or no Hap, if he somehow got out and into these mountains…" Strait hesitated, then went on. "I can't get inside his head except to think that the resort is a place to go that's real and that he knows about and where there are very important people he can talk to, a number of whom he knows. How he'd do it, I don't know. I'm just thinking out loud."

Marshall turned and walked back to Captain Diaz to pull her away from Miguel and the boys. "Would it be possible," he asked, "for the president to somehow get off these mountains and to the Aragon Resort?"

"Avoiding satellite detection?"

"What if he had a Mylar blanket like the limo driver? What if those were the things we saw in the water in the helicopter images. The president, Hap Daniels, Marten, and the driver."

"Then you're suggesting he went the rest of the way by foot, overland, and in the rain and dark."

"Yes."

Captain Diaz smiled. "It's not likely at all."

"Is-it-possible?" Marshall enunciated coldly.

"If he was crazy and if he had some idea of how to get there. I would say yes, I guess it's possible."

• 7:03 A.M.

They were dressed as groundskeepers. Dark green shirts with lighter green pants. The classic logo of The Resort at Aragon stitched in white italics over the left breast pocket, their old clothes hidden in a trash container near the back of the maintenance building where the rolling stock was. Of the four, only the president kept one personal item with him and it was tucked safely inside his shirt. It was the one thing he had kept all along and what he would wear when he addressed the New World Institute delegation. The thing that, despite his workman's uniform and growth of beard, would make him instantly recognizable to everyone there. His toupee.

José stood at the door, peering out. Marten eased the electric cart up to it and stopped. The president sat beside him, Hap in back, machine pistol in hand, along with a contingent of necessary props-rakes, brooms, plastic trash cans, and something else Hap had picked up simply because he felt it might come in handy later: a pair of binoculars, lifted from the top of what appeared to be a supervisor's desk.

"Any sign of him yet?" the president asked in Spanish.

José shook his head, then-"Sí," he said suddenly, and looked back. "The man in white just went back into the laundry," he said in Spanish and the president translated.

"Let's go," Hap said.

José slid the front door open, Marten eased the cart out and waited for José to close it again. Ten seconds later he jumped into the cart alongside Hap, and then they were going, moving silently past the buildings and turning onto the gravel road that would take them down behind the golf course and then up a winding mile-and-a-half-long service road through deep woods to the church.

• 7:12 A.M.

They crested a hill and stopped under the cover of a large conifer. For the first time they could see past the vineyards to the golf course and the resort itself. In front of the elegant white-stuccoed main building were seven unmarked highly polished jet-black tour buses with heavily tinted windows. The buses that had picked up the New World group from the airport in Barcelona Friday and that would take them back at the close of the sunrise service this morning.

Nearby were a dozen large black SUVs, Spanish Secret Service vehicles that would escort them to the church and then to the airport. Farther out they could see a major force of police vehicles blocking the main road in from the highway. More were stationed every quarter mile or so along the work road that bisected the vineyard. Everything in place, as Hap knew it would be.

High above the resort itself and at the top of a long curving blacktop road, they could just make out the ancient stone and red-tile roof of the Romanesque structure that was La Iglesia de Santa Maria, the Church of Saint Mary.

"That it?" the president asked.

"Yes, sir," Hap said.

The president let out a breath. They were that close.