• 7:48 A.M.

The Sig Sauer in his lap, Marten drove the last quarter mile cautiously, the gravel road twisting in a large S through a thick stand of conifers. Through them they could just see the church and the small wooded parking lot that served its rear entrance. Hap glanced behind them. There was nothing. They'd had to wait an extraordinarily long time for the police vehicles to leave the area below. When finally they had and Hap gave Marten the okay and then they'd started up again, he'd still kept a close watch behind. The police might have gone but this road was clearly their assignment which meant they could, and probably would, return at any time.

The first rays of the morning sun touched the mountain peaks behind them as Marten pulled into the parking lot and stopped beside three church vans.

"Those should be church staff getting ready for the service," Hap said of the vans. "They'll be inside and upstairs in the main part of the church." He glanced around quickly, then gave the okay, and the four got out of the cart, looking for all the world as if they belonged there, taking the rakes and brooms and trash cans and setting them near the rear entry door as if preparing for work.

The elevation here was higher than at the church's main entrance in the front and gave them a view of the large central parking area and the long curving road leading up to it from the rolling sprawl of the resort and vineyards below.

"Keep an eye on the door," Hap said to Marten, then took the binoculars and walked up a small hill to squat next to a large tree. Through the glasses he could see the force of uniformed police and police vehicles guarding the surrounding roads. A pan to the main parking lot and he could see the Spanish Secret Service SUVs taking positions in front of and behind the sleek black buses and the line of New World delegates boarding them. He wrinkled his forehead in puzzlement and looked back to the others.

"The people getting on the buses are dressed in evening clothes. All of them, men and women."

"What?" The president moved in, Hap handed him the glasses, and he looked through them. "Formal evening clothes for a nondenominational sunrise service? Was this brought up to you in the briefing?"

"No," Hap said.

The president shook his head, "I don't get it."

"Neither do I."

• 7:50 A.M.

They left José outside to serve as a lookout, clearing leaves from a flower bed and guardedly entered the church through the rear door.

Hap led them down a narrow limestone hallway. To their right was a meeting room of some kind and past it another stairway leading up that the president would take to reach the church proper. Twenty feet more and Hap turned them left and down a stone stairway that led to a basement storage area where he felt it was safe for them to wait until the service began.

Partway down, the staircase made a large semicircular turn as if it were circumventing a turret or something large and rounded on the far side of the wall. It was curious architecture for a church building as old as this one, reconstructed or not. Even the president mentioned it.

"There shouldn't be round walls inside an essentially rectangular building, not one like this," he said, almost eerily.

"Whatever it is, it's not noted on the blueprints the resort management gave us. The Spanish Secret Service made no reference to it either," Hap said.

The president studied it again and then let it pass as they reached the bottom of the staircase and started along a hallway with doors open to rooms on both left and right and one closed with a "W/C" on the door, water closet or restroom.

"Meeting and classrooms, restroom," Hap said, then abruptly stopped at a closed door and opened it. "In here," he said, and flicked on a wall switch. The room filled with light, and they entered the small storage room he had promised. Cleaning materials and paper supplies filled shelves on either side. Everyday tools-hammers, wrenches, pliers, tin snips, screwdrivers, hand drills, plug-in work lights and several well-used flashlights-were mounted neatly on a rack above a workbench near the rear. A far corner was stacked with a dozen cardboard boxes labeled Biblias Santas. Holy Bibles.

Hap closed the door and looked at his watch. "It's seven fifty-six," he said, looking to the president. "I have no way to know if your friend Rabbi Aznar is still scheduled to be part of the service, but whoever is giving the convocation, it should begin about ten after eight. The Spanish Secret Service will sweep it before people come in. I don't want us going up there blindly and having to wait in the hallway before everyone is seated and the doors are closed. We might convince the Spaniards but most likely not, especially if their orders came from Madrid. They'd think what they all think, they're doing the right thing by hustling you out of here. So to wait up there is too dangerous. The Spaniards will stand down to a degree once the convocation begins. That's when we go up."

"How are we going to know when that is? We can't post someone up there, not even José."

"At the end of the hallway is the church's video room. In it are monitors for twenty automated security cameras mounted throughout the upper church and in the parking lot outside that are fed to central security at the resort. Trouble is, the room is locked. But if I can get us in, we'll be able to see everything that's going on in the church proper and the area outside it. What worries me is that it could take time to get that door open, if I can get it open at all. Somebody comes along in the meantime, sees us and alerts security, this whole thing can turn real nasty in a hurry."

"Hap," the president pressed him, "somebody comes along, I'm the same as you two fellas and José outside," he half-smiled and pointed to the resort logo on his work shirt, "just some half-bald guy who works here."

• 7:58 A.M.

The door to the control room was fifty feet down the hallway from the storage room, made of steel and locked. On the wall next to it was an electronic keypad and a slot for a coded security card.

Marten stood lookout, his back against the wall, the Sig Sauer held at his side. Hap put his hand on the doorknob and turned it. Nothing happened.

"Most of these devices have a master override, a special code technicians use to get inside them. You just have to find it."

He punched a code into the keypad and tried the door again. Nothing. He tried a different code. Still nothing. He tried another series of numbers, and then another series still. And then another. Still nothing. Finally he shook his head and turned to the president. "It's not going to work, and we can't break the door down. We'll have to go back to the storeroom and judge the start of services as best we can."

"Cousin," Marten looked to the president. "When we got up here to the church I looked back the way we had come. You can see way out across the valley, past the maintenance buildings to the mountains where we were last night.

"I drew an imaginary line from the big door where the monorail ended in the tunnel to here. It went across the vineyards, through the maintenance buildings, and to the church here in a line about as straight as you can get. If Foxx had that tunnel dug at the same time this resort was built, he would have had to put the dirt somewhere. That tunnel is ten miles long inside the mountain itself; it's probably another eight or more miles over here if he brought it that far. Any way you look at it, it's a lot of dirt and rock. You said this soil was all fill, maybe that's where it came from."

"I don't understand."

"If I'm right, all of this, the labs, the monorail tunnel, this church, even the resort, is Foxx's work. His idea, his design, his construction, everything."