• 8:44 A.M.

The chant of the monks abruptly stopped and the church filled with silence. Fog swirled on the stage where Cristina sat enraptured, joyfully waiting for the moment the fire would come and her journey, like that of the ox, would begin.

Suddenly a figure moved past her through the fog like some Shakespearean character. Another spotlight shone, illuminating Reverend Beck dressed in clerical vestments. He crossed to the front of the stage and lifted a cordless microphone.

"Hamilton Rogers," he said, his eyes searching the audience, his voice resounding through the church's state-of-the-art speaker system. "Where are you, Mr. Vice President?"

• 8:45 A.M.

A great roar came from the crowd as five separate remote cameras picked up Vice President Hamilton Rogers getting up from his seat and moving to the aisle, where monks escorted him toward the stage. When he reached it, he bounded up to embrace Reverend Beck as if this were some kind of revival meeting.

"Hamilton Rogers," Beck said to the congregation. "The next president of the United States!"

Thunderous applause followed.

Beck and Rogers again embraced warmly, then turned, grasped hands, and lifted their arms to the crowd. Wave after wave of applause followed. The revival had suddenly become a political grandstand.

• 8:46 A.M.

Marten looked to the president. "If there was ever any question about their plans for you, there's none now."

"The thing is," the president said, "it's not just 'my friends' anymore. It's all of them. They all know what's going on. It shows how incredibly intertwined and indoctrinated they are. They're not ordinary human beings. They're another species altogether. One whose entire ideology is filled with unbridled arrogance."

• 8:47 A.M.

Hamilton Rogers motioned for silence. In seconds the applause stopped, Reverend Beck handed the microphone to the vice president, and Rogers stepped to the front of the stage. He looked to the congregation and began calling out names, recognizing new members. One by one they stood: a young CEO of a Taiwanese export company; a middle-aged woman who was a strong, left-of-center Central American politician; a fifty-two-year-old Australian investment banker; a sixty-seven-year-old Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist from California; a seventy-year-old famously conservative Italian media mogul; and then another and another. Thundering applause followed each. Politically left, right, or center, the affiliation didn't seem to matter.

And then Vice President Rogers called out the rest. These were not new members but "old friends," he said, "dear, dear friends, longtime members joining us up here for this momentous occasion.

"United States Congresswoman Jane Dee Baker. United States Secretary of State David Chaplin. Secretary of Defense Terrence Langdon. United States Air Force General and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chester Keaton. Presidential Chief of Staff Tom Curran. Presidential confidant Evan Byrd."

Again the church filled with ear-shattering applause. Applause that grew louder and louder as one by one the audience stood to proudly and patriotically salute those whom Rogers had designated.

• 8:53 A.M.

Marten whirled at the knock on the control-room door, the Sig Sauer coming up in his hand. Hap stepped in front of the president, swinging the machine pistol.

Hurriedly the knock came again. One, two, three.

"It's José," Marten said.

Hap nodded and Marten went to the door and cautiously opened it. José stood there alone. His eyes intense, his body wound tight. Marten let him in and then locked the door.

"What is it?" the president asked in Spanish.

"I went down into the church as far as I could," he said in Spanish. "Through the door there are big wide stairs and then a big steel door. Also an elevator, I think. But everything is locked. No one is there. If there is a tunnel further down we cannot get to it."

"Gracias, José, muchas gracias," the president said gratefully, then smiled. "Está bien, relájate." It's alright, relax.

Immediately the president looked to Marten and Hap and translated.

"All we can do is wait and hope no one comes," Hap nodded at the monitors. "I'm assuming that when the ceremony is over the hydraulic stage will come back down, the original floor will slide back into place, and the monks will unlock the doors. After that everyone will go out to the buses as if nothing has happened. That's when we move. Up the stairs and out the way we came in. We don't go then we're dead in the water because the minute the guests have cleared the area the Spanish Secret Service will sweep the building and then lock it up tight."

"What about Cristina?" Marten snapped. "They're going to kill her."

Hap stared at him. "There's nothing we can do about her without endangering the president. Understand that and put her out of your mind."

"I understand it. I don't like it."

"Neither do I. It's just the way it is."

Marten stared back, then finally relented. "We get out. Then what?" he said quietly. "Where do we go? There are five hundred men out there, most of them focused on this building and the people inside it."

"We go out," Hap said calmly, "get in the cart, go back to the place we hid coming up. Security should depart the area in less than an hour after everyone leaves. After that we take it from there."

"Hap, your people are still out there with the Spanish police. They don't find us on the mountain, they'll start this way-maybe they already have. They're not going home until they have the president."

"Marten, we can't stay here."

"Woody," the president looked at Hap.

"Woody?"

"We take the chance he's not corrupted. As soon as we're out and you have a clear signal, text-message him on his cell phone. Tell him where we are and to get the hell in here fast with his chopper. Just him and the helo, nobody else. People will be leaving. It's a Marine Corps helicopter, nobody will know what's going on. He touches down in the back parking lot where we left the cart. Thirty seconds, we're on it and out of here."

"Mr. President, even if it works, he flies in and picks us up, we don't know what he'll do afterward. He could fly us straight to the waiting CIA jet. He does that and there're twenty guys under orders to get you to wherever they're supposed to take you and what you or I say won't matter."

"Hap," the president took a deliberate breath, "at some point damn soon we're going to have to trust somebody. I like Major Woods for a lot of reasons and always have. What I've given you are orders."

"Yes, sir."

Suddenly Reverend Beck's voice boomed through the speakers. They turned to see the congressional chaplain on every monitor. Speaking into the cordless microphone, red, green, and amber light playing on him from below, he crossed the darkened stage in a trail of theatrical fog. Whatever he was saying was in a language none of them had ever heard. He spoke again, as if it was a line of verse in adoration of someone or something. The New World members responded like a chorus in the same language, the way the families had the night before in the amphitheater.

Beck spoke again, then stopped and extended his hand to Cristina, still spotlighted on the darkened stage. She smiled proudly as Beck spoke again. A second spotlight followed him as he turned from Cristina and addressed the congregation, his right hand circling the stage the way he had done in the amphitheater. It was a call that demanded response from the congregation, and they did, repeating in enthusiastic unison what he had said. Abruptly the light swung from Beck and onto Luciana, her sharply pulled-back hair and daggered eye makeup radiating the power and nightmare fear of witchcraft.