"I know, Jim, and I take that responsibility gravely."

Jake Lowe crossed the room. "There are a billion questions here," he said. "What's going on? Who's responsible? How did they get in and get out without attracting the attention of any of the Secret Service's rings of security? What power or powers were involved? Which countries do we notify and what do we tell them? Do we set up roadblocks, close down airports? And-how do we do it without the media getting wind of it? As Jim said, we can't have the world thinking the president of the United States has gone missing. We need a cover story and fast. I think this is it." He looked to Hap Daniels. "Tell me if there's a flaw here or why it won't work." He looked to White House Press Secretary Dick Greene. "You tell me if you can pull it off with the media, or you can't." He looked again to the secure speaker phone. "You still there, Mr. Vice President?"

"Yes, Jake."

"Can the others hear me too?"

"We can, Jake." It was the voice of Secretary of State David Chaplin.

"Okay, here we go." Lowe looked to the others. "The hotel's already in an uproar. Everyone knows we feared a serious breach of security. What no one knows is we first got word of that breach, a serious terrorist threat, at three o'clock this morning. At that time we woke POTUS and took him down a service elevator to the basement garage and then by unmarked car to an undisclosed location. That's where he is now. Safe and unharmed, while our investigation continues." He looked to Dick Greene. "Can you handle that?"

"I think so. At least for a while."

Now he looked to Hap Daniels. "You?"

"Yes, sir. But that still doesn't answer the most urgent question. Where he is and who's got him?"

National Security Adviser Marshall's eyes swung to Daniels. "He was lost on your watch. This has never happened in history. You find him and you bring him home safely. But you keep the doing awful goddamn quiet. You don't and this gets out, the Secret Service is going to look like Little Bo Peep to the whole damn world."

"We will bring him home, sir. You have my word on it. Safely and quietly."

Marshall glanced at Lowe and then back to Hap Daniels, "You damn well better."

• ROME, LEONARDO DA VINCI AIRPORT, 9:40 A.M.

Nicholas Marten's Air Malta flight from Valletta had landed thirty minutes earlier and now he waited to board an Alitalia flight for the hour-and-forty-five-minute trip to Barcelona, which was Demi Picard's destination when she left Malta.

He'd learned where she'd gone the same way he'd found out where she was staying in the Maltese capital-by bribing the maître d' at the Café Tripoli for the destination of the taxi he had called for her, Reverend Beck, and the young woman, Cristina-"The British Hotel, Mr. Marten," he'd said quietly.

Marten had done the same with the mustachioed concierge at the British Hotel, approaching him moments after Demi left, telling him Ms. Picard was his fiancée and that they had gotten into a quarrel and she had run off.

"Her mother was supposed to meet us here in Valletta tomorrow. I don't know what I should tell her now; Demi is her only child," he'd lied despondently, playing the kind of game he hadn't played since he'd been a homicide detective in Los Angeles, taking almost any role necessary to get the information he was after. "Do you have any idea where she went?"

"I'm afraid I can't say, sir."

Marten became even more sincere. "She was quite upset, wasn't she?"

"Yes, sir. Especially when she called just after six this morning and asked, or rather demanded, that I do everything in my power to make a hotel reservation for her."

"And did you?"

"Yes, sir."

It was then Marten slipped the concierge a sizable tip and said, "For mother."

The concierge hesitated then leaned forward and quickly scribbled Hotel Regente Majestic, Barcelona on a piece of stationery. Folding it, he handed it to Marten. "For mother," he said genuinely. "I understand completely."

Why Demi was going to Barcelona and in such a hurry after everyone in Malta had seemingly abandoned her, or at least left the island, was anyone's guess. No matter what had happened between her and Reverend Beck, she was clearly connected to him, as, it seemed, was Merriman Foxx. Once again he thought how curious it was for an African-American minister to be a long-time friend of an apartheid-era officer in the South African army who had headed a medical unit attempting to develop secret biological weapons designed to wipe out the black African population.

There was also something else. Something Marten hadn't really thought much about until he'd come upon Beck at Merriman Foxx's table at the Café Tripoli-that it had been the reverend who called Dr. Stephenson for medical assistance when Caroline had broken down after the funerals of her son and husband, and that it had been Stephenson who administered whatever it had been that had started Caroline's rapid spiral into death. Beck to Stephenson to Foxx, the doctor/white-haired man, with his long, hideous, fingers and that horrid thumb with its tiny balled cross. Those things taken together made Reverend Beck nearly as interesting as Dr. Foxx himself, and Marten hoped that by following Ms. Picard to Barcelona he would find either or both.

Marten heard his Alitalia flight called for boarding. Carry-on bag with his electronic notebook inside over his shoulder, he started for the gate. As he did, he noticed a slightly built young man in line several passengers behind him. He looked to be in his early twenties and was wearing jeans and a baggy jacket over some kind of campy T-shirt. A student maybe, or a young artist or musician, who knew? The trouble was he had seen him before. In the lobby of the Castille Hotel in Valletta as he checked out, and then again on his flight from Valletta to Rome. And now here he was boarding the same flight to Barcelona. There was no reason to suspect that it was anything more than coincidence. Except that he did, and it made him uneasy. It was almost as if the young man had the name Merriman Foxx written on his forehead.

• MADRID, 11:00 A.M.

It was now four hours since Jake Lowe discovered the president was missing. In the United States every top-security federal agency was clandestinely in overdrive, among them the Secret Service, the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, and every branch of military intelligence. Vice President Hamilton Rogers had personally informed the prime minister of Spain and the U.S. ambassador to Spain. It was thought at first he should also inform the U.S. ambassadors worldwide and in turn, the presidents of Russia, China, Japan, France, and Italy, the chancellor of Germany, and the prime minister of Great Britain, but that idea was stopped in its tracks by Jake Lowe.

This was and had to remain an absolute "need-to-know" circumstance, Lowe said. What had happened had taken place only a short while earlier, meaning there was every chance the president was still somewhere close by and could be found quickly and brought to safety in secret. The more people who knew what had happened, the greater the risk of a security breach. If that happened it would only be a heartbeat before the world knew the president was missing. What would follow-he elaborated on Dr. Marshall's earlier worries-would be a sudden perceived imbalance of global power, followed in turn by sharply escalated national security fears, America's as much or more than any other. In rapid succession those fears would morph into raised military tensions and a massive upheaval in the international stock markets, and after that God only knew what else. The possibilities were endless. Such was the power of the office of the president of the United States and accordingly, the person who occupied it, which made it imperative to keep "the need to know" to as few people as possible.