"What if it is?"

"He might have left keypads and entry codes for others, but why would he complicate things for himself and have a dozen electronic security keys when one would do?" He took Merriman Foxx's security card from his jacket, went to the door, and slid it through the slot next to the door, as he had done to get them into Foxx's experimentation labs under the monastery.

There was a distinct click. Marten turned the knob, and the door opened.

"It seems Dr. Foxx's interests were even more encompassing than we thought."

• 8:00 A.M.

The control room was carpeted, with bunkerlike concrete walls and painted a deep metallic gray. A lone hi-tech office chair sat before a control console above which a bank of twenty closed-circuit television monitors were mounted. To one side was what looked like a narrow panel built into the wall. It was made of steel and painted the same color as the room. What it was was a door; one with flush-set hinges, two inset locks, one above the other, and nothing else. What it was for or where it led, Hap didn't know. The only information he had came from the blueprints the resort management had given to the Secret Service. The room they were in had been designated as "video control room," the inset-panel door had been labeled "emergency access to electrical panels." Hap had been in the video room during his earlier security walk-through but had not asked that the door be unlocked and opened. Although as a potential hiding place for bombs or persons bent on doing harm to the president it would have been checked during the final Secret Service sweep of the grounds in the hours just prior to the president's arrival.

"What would Foxx's interest in all this have been? The resort as some kind of ostentatious cover for his work?" the president asked as they turned their attention to the monitors.

"Don't know," Marten said, "I would have made no connection at all if you hadn't mentioned the composition of the hillside, and if I hadn't drawn my imaginary line, and if his card hadn't just opened this door."

"Here come the buses." Hap was staring at the monitors, where a line of the sleek black buses could be seen coming up the road from the resort. Other monitors picked up the Spanish Secret Service's black SUVs escorting them. Still others showed the inside of the church from a dozen or more angles.

One was focused on the central aisle just inside the main doors where a dozen black-robed monks waited. Another showed the altar. Another still the choir bays on either side of it. There was an angle on the pulpit. One on the door behind it and to the side, where the president planned to enter. Another showed a long empty corridor somewhere. Another yet gave a view of the chapel's seating area, where the seats were not rows of pews but rather more like a theater with stadium seating.

Another monitor revealed an area to the side of the altar where a door suddenly opened and another black-robed monk entered followed by two people in clerical robes.

"Reverend Beck," the president said in surprise as they saw the first person. Then the second person came into view, a woman.

"The witch Luciana," Marten said.

"Congressional chaplain Rufus Beck?" Hap was as surprised as the president.

"Señor?" There was a sudden pounding on the door. "Señor?"

"José," Marten said.

Machine pistol in hand, Hap stepped to the door and carefully opened it.

"I couldn't find you. Helicopters are coming," Jose was talking excitedly to the president in Spanish. "Out there," he pointed off, "from the mountains."

The president snapped a quick translation.

"Christ!" Hap blurted. "They figured it out. We've got to go, Mr. President, and now. We're caught in here, we're dead, all of us."

• 8:06 A.M.

They could hear the thudding chop of approaching helicopters as they came out. Hap first, cautiously, machine pistol ready. Then José, the president, and Marten with the Sig Sauer. Hap started them for the cart, then suddenly pulled them back behind the cover of one of the church vans. A police SUV was coming up the gravel work road toward them.

In the next moment the helicopters arrived. There were two of them and they were identical, painted dark green and white with the American flag just above the doors. They were United States Marine Squadron One, U.S. Marine helicopters that ferried the president and other ranking administration officials wherever they needed to go.

"Marine Two," Hap said in astonishment as the helos circled over the parking lot and then suddenly dropped down to land. Marine One was the designation when the president was aboard, Marine Two when it was the vice president.

"So much for your speech, Cousin," Marten said as the helos touched down and were instantly surrounded by shining black SUVs. Immediately the doors opened and the vice president's Secret Service detail got out. They waited for the helicopter engines to shut down, then the agents went directly to them. A half second later the doors were pulled back and those inside stepped out.

Vice President Hamilton Rogers. Secretary of Defense Terrence Langdon. Secretary of State David Chaplin. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, United States Air Force General Chester Keaton. Presidential Chief of Staff Tom Curran. And Evan Byrd. Of the group that had faced the president in Madrid only his chief political advisor, Jake Lowe and national security advisor, Dr. James Marshall, were missing.

"My God," the president breathed.

"Hap," Marten warned, nodding toward the grove of trees and the approaching police SUV.

Hap glanced at it, then back at the helos and the swarm of Secret Service agents surrounding the president's "friends."

"We're going back inside, now!" Hap took the president by the arm and rushed him toward the church door they had come out only seconds before.

• 8:10 A.M.

As if it were possible, the monks pulled Demi deeper into her nightmare.

The room was like a stage, semicircular and open to a darkened ceiling thirty feet or more above her. The walls reaching to it were polished steel. The floor, visible only moments before, was now knee-deep in swirling man-made fog illuminated from beneath by unseen lights in an ethereal combination of reds, greens, purples and ambers. In the center of it was a simple black throne where Cristina perched regally, her fall of magnificent black hair stark against her clinging white gown, the setting and the lighting making her the star attraction of whatever was to happen next. Clearly there was to be a show, and soon there would be an audience for it, one Demi clearly imagined would be made up of what Gia-como Gela had described as he told of the traditions-"an annual rite performed before several hundred members of a powerful order called the Unknowns."

Wordless, the monks took Demi toward the center of the stage, then stopped as slowly a great balled cross of Aldebaran rose up before them. Immediately the monks secured her feet to its base, then pulled a strap tight around her throat and lifted her arms outward, binding them to the crossbars. In seconds she had become a living crucifix fastened to a pagan icon.

Cristina looked over at her and smiled. "The ox waits."

"No."

"Yes."

At that moment a monk appeared through the fog and approached Cristina. He handed her a silver goblet filled with red wine. She took it, and smiled, and gently opened her mouth. As she did the monk laid a round wafer on her tongue. She lifted the goblet and drank, swallowing the wafer. This, Demi knew, was part of the ceremony. She also knew she had witnessed a false Eucharist. Christ and the Last Supper were not part of this rite. Nor was the wafer symbolic of his body nor the wine of his blood. The night before, the ox had stood calmly and peacefully as it was consumed by fire, no fear or pain in its eyes. Clearly it had been given some drug, and Demi was certain Cristina had been given one now. But she knew too that while the drugged beast had died peacefully, it had all been for show. For the children and the others to see and to believe Cristina would have that same peaceful journey. But it was a lie; she had seen the video of her mother's sacrificial death and knew what Cristina's death and hers would be like. Cristina might be drugged now, but the effect wouldn't last. Whoever these people were, their ritual centered on horrible, excruciating human death. She knew too that while Cristina's burning was the rite's centerpiece, it was she who was to be the very pointed political sideshow, her own torturous murder an example to any of the Unknowns who at some point might decide to rebel and turn against them.