• 9:23 A.M.

The room was at the far end of a darkened hallway. Like the video and electrical rooms below, it was little more than a concrete bunker. Beck had gained access to it through two separate doors. The first was wooden and hand carved, and like other doors throughout the church required a security card used in conjunction with a code punched into an electronic keypad. The second, only feet away, was made of heavy-gauge steel and required another keypad code, which opened a singular slot above it and into which he slipped a special key Foxx had given him. Once inside he sat down in front of a six-foot-long control panel that looked like something out of NASA and incorporated a series of television monitors, switches, dials, and gauges that were like those in an industrial natural-gas-transmission plant, which was very nearly what this room was. That the power was out in the rest of the building was not evident here. Every light, monitor, switch, dial, and gauge operated perfectly, the entire system powered by Chinese-made heavy-duty polymer batteries.

Beck took a breath, then scrutinized the string of carefully labeled gauges in front of him.

Among them:

Pressure Transducer Cylinder Pressure Distortion

Centrifugal Surge and Pulsation Control

Piping Vibration Control

Piping Configuration Optimization

Leak Detection Control

Compressor Vibrations

Satisfied by their readings, he looked down and flipped five switches in succession. Then he took a second key, inserted it into an eyehole on the panel, and turned it. Immediately a half dozen gauges changed color from red to bright green. A digital timer started at sixty minutes. Beck ran it down to fifteen and stopped it. "One score and five," he breathed, "one score and five."

In a mechanical room in the tunnels far below a two thousand horsepower diesel engine was driving a gas, turbine-driven, centrifugal compressor. For the better part of two hours it had been pumping natural gas through massive twenty-inch pipelines and six-inch nozzles, charging the miles of old mining shafts, monorail transport tunnels, Foxx's laboratories, work areas, and holding cells with highly explosive, lethal fumes. The church itself was to have been the last charged, the filling to have begun once the hydraulic stage had been lowered to its hidden room below and the original floor was back in place, and when the services were over and the security forces had completed their sweep of the building and left.

Marten's presence changed that. In Foxx's absence, control fell to Beck as arranged by the Covenant's carefully designed rules for succession of power. While the Covenant's overall program fell this year to the U.S. in the revolving international chair of stewardship, the security of the Aragon project was, after Foxx's death, officially Beck's. Meaning its long-planned destruction was now fully in his hands.

Beck studied the gauges and monitors once more. Satisfied, he looked at the timer. Once started, it would activate the nozzles in the church's basement and the building would begin to fill with gas. In fifteen minutes it would rise to the level of the jets burning onstage. When it did the building and everything in it would explode. At the same time igniters in the tunnels would trigger, and a firestorm reaching as much as 2,500 degrees would roll through everything below. A "slow buildup of methane gas over the decades" the authorities would call it, and connect it to the explosion that the day before had rocked the ground beneath the monastery at Montserrat. It was an inferno the authorities would let burn itself out, and it would be weeks if not months before it did. In the end there would be nothing left but collapsed tunnels and a residue of super-heated dust.

Three decades earlier the membership had agreed on a far-reaching strategy for the Middle East and engaged a recently initiated member named Merriman Foxx to devise the plan for it. Three years later he had presented that plan to the membership. In it, and in precise terms, he outlined what needed to be done and where, how much it would cost and how long it would take, and what would happen to it afterward. They had agreed, and the project was put in motion. Two years after that the land had been bought and construction on what they termed "The Aragon Project" had begun. And now, twenty-five years later to the day, Beck, fully employing the authority invested in him, had taken control and moved up the hour.

"One score and five," he said once more, as if in final homage to that authority and to his own loyalty, then started the timer. Immediately he turned to a small computer beside it, slid a ThumbDrive from his pocket, and inserted it into the computer's USB port, then looked at the monitor just above it. A moment later a bar came up asking for a password. His fingers went to the keyboard, he typed in a password, then repeated it. A split second later he moved the cursor to Drive C: and clicked on, then dragged the entire contents to Drive A:. Ten seconds later he asked the computer for permission to remove the mass storage drive from the USB port. Permission was given, and he slipped the ThumbDrive from the machine and put it back in his pocket. The power outage had affected everything in the building but this room here and the backup battery supply for the master computer in the bunker below, where the Covenant's archive files were recorded and stored. Both machines were interconnected so no matter what might happen there the same information was always backed up here. It was just those files, that information, that Beck had safely copied onto the ThumbDrive.

Beck stood and took one last look around. Satisfied everything was in order, he left, securing the doors behind him. It was 9:25 A.M. At 9:40 precisely the rising gas would reach the burning jets on the stage and the inferno would begin.

• 9:27 A.M.

His nerves on edge, machine pistol in hand, Hap hustled the president up the stairs and down the corridor toward the rear exit. They were already four minutes past the time he had allocated to Marten and José to get to the women and get them out, and he didn't like it. That he had the two hard drives from Foxx's master computers in his pants pocket was little solace. His sense was the same now as it had been when he'd cautioned the president at the beginning, that without entering the correct password before removing them they would be corrupted and therefore useless. Useless hard drives in exchange for the life of the president made no sense at all, but it had been done, and all they could do was move on. And they were.

Thirty feet down the corridor was the door leading out to the church's back parking lot where they had left the electric cart. Hap took out the BlackBerry he had preprogrammed with the text message he would send to Woody the moment he was free of the building and had a clear signal.

Ten feet more and he saw the president look up anxiously as they passed the stairway Marten and José would have used to get up to the church proper. It was dark and quiet and he knew what the president was thinking. That maybe they had rescued the women and were already outside waiting. But that, like the uncorrupted removal of the hard drives, was a pipe dream and he knew it. The situation in the upper church was far too complex for two men, or rather a man and a boy, to navigate successfully. By now he was certain both Marten and José were dead. The women too.

"Hap!" he heard the sharp cry of Marten's voice behind them. They whirled to see Marten and José appear at the bottom of the stairs with Demi between them. Her complexion was deadly white, her head slumped on her chest, her hair and scarlet dress burned and still smoldering. Seemingly half conscious, she sobbed uncontrollably.