"Good, Victor. Very good." Richard paused. "I have another assignment for you."

"What is it, Richard?"

"I want you to go to France, to a race track outside of Paris."

"Alright."

"Pack now and go down to the desk and check out. When you do an envelope will be waiting. Inside will be an airline ticket to Paris and instructions on what to do when you get there."

"Is the ticket first-class?"

"Of course, Victor."

"And you want me to go now?"

"Yes, Victor. As soon as we hang up."

"Alright, Richard."

"Thank you, Victor."

"No, Richard, thank you."

• 11:45 A.M.

A tall, slim, balding man wearing glasses and dressed in a black sweater, blue jeans, and running shoes sat at a back table in a small café in the center of Madrid's old city, a mile or more from the Hotel Ritz. He sipped strong coffee and watched people begin to filter in for lunch. That he spoke Spanish fluently helped because it made him seem more at ease and less foreign than he was. So far, as had been the case throughout the morning as he had walked the streets trying to get his bearings, not one person had given him as much as a second glance. Hopefully it would remain that way and no one would realize that the lone man sitting among them was John Henry Harris, the president of the United States.

Growing up, Johnny Harris had heard his late father's double-barreled admonition often enough. The first part was, "Always think on your feet and never be afraid to act if the need arises." Part two followed immediately: "And just because things seem comfortable don't think things can't change in a hurry because they not only can, they usually will."

If that constant, often grating homily had helped prepare him to take action against the cruel and sudden turn of events here in Madrid, two other pieces of his education had helped almost as well. First, as a young man he had worked on farms and ranches in his hometown of Salinas, California, where he learned to speak Spanish to the point where he shifted easily and comfortably between it and English and where he had a hand in almost everything, including the flying of crop dusters, hence his Secret Service code name. Second, as an adjunct to farming, he had been a carpenter and later a building contractor, working primarily in the renovation of older commercial buildings in Salinas and then farther north in San Jose. In result, he was familiar with the nuts and bolts of construction: structural and mechanical requirements; electrical, plumbing, heating, and air-conditioning; and the use of space as it applied to function and design. Older buildings took special care, especially when it came to incorporating central heating and air-conditioning systems into the original architecture and fitting them into spaces not initially designed for them. The Ritz Madrid had opened in 1910. Since then it had been renovated any number of times. When the current heating and air-conditioning system had been added he didn't know. What he did know was that the Ritz was a large hotel, which meant the ducting for central heating and air-conditioning would be substantial-the main ducts themselves might well be four to six feet square, with side ducts probably in the neighborhood of two by three feet. The side ducts would be concealed in drop ceilings in the hallways and in certain individual areas of the guest rooms. The main shafts would, or should, have built-in ladders to access the interior of the system from basement to roof.

He knew the Secret Service advance team would have checked those shafts and made certain they were secure long before the presidential party arrived. It meant they would be locked at the specific points of entry: the access panels on the roof and in the basement. What they would have had no reason to consider was that at both roof and basement those same access panels would have internal safety latches to prevent anyone from becoming trapped inside. Meaning the panels could be opened from the inside and would lock again automatically once someone had come out. Considering any commercial building's need for usable space-and the Ritz, as an old renovated building, would be no different-it was more than probable that the bottom of the air ducts would be incorporated into already existent areas of the basement, a storage area or furnace room, perhaps even the laundry.

It was this knowledge and this assumption that Johnny Harris had counted on to make his escape. It had taken nearly two hours and been considerably more difficult than he had expected. The side ducts had been smaller than he'd anticipated and he'd made a number of turns that led to dead ends that had to be retraced backwards in the dark. He'd used up several books of matches lighting his way and was beginning to think he might be trapped in there forever until he finally found a main duct and started down.

Several knuckles and a part of his shin had been scraped raw, and every bit of him was strained and sore from the sheer physical effort, but nonetheless his main sense of it had been right and it had worked-the principal air shaft opened through an access panel into a large supply room in the building's cellar. Once out, the panel had automatically locked closed behind him, and he'd walked down a short, dimly lit hallway to an area near the loading ramp, where he'd hidden behind a large walk-in freezer until a produce truck arrived at a little after three in the morning. He'd watched carefully, biding his time as two men unloaded it. Then, when they went to the truck's cab to sign the delivery manifest, he slipped into the back and hid behind a stack of lettuce crates until the driver got in and drove off, passing both his own Secret Service agents and Spanish security posted outside. The next delivery stop was another hotel several blocks away. Here he waited until the driver went inside, then simply jumped down and walked off in the darkness.

Now, with the time closing on noon, he sat, still unrecognized, sipping coffee in the small old-town café, his wallet in his back pocket-a wallet that held his California driver's license, personal credit cards, and nearly a thousand euros in cash, and minus the toupee no one except his personal barber had any idea he wore-fully aware of the chaos that would have exploded once it had been discovered he was missing and trying to decide how best to get from where he was to where he was going without someone recognizing him and sounding the alarm.

• HOTEL RITZ, 11:50 A.M.

The entire fourth floor was a screaming beehive as Hap Daniels had known it would be. White House Press Secretary Dick Greene was about to make a special statement to the crush of world media who had swarmed the building, adding chaos to the throng of reporters in the White House press pool already following the president on his European tour. Word had been leaked that the president was no longer in Madrid, that he had secretly been taken to an undisclosed location in the middle of the night after a credible terrorist threat was intercepted by Spanish intelligence. As the Secret Service senior official supervising the investigation, Daniels had already been in contact with George Kellner, CIA chief of station Madrid, and Emilio Vasquez, the head of Spanish intelligence, setting up a joint task force that would coordinate their own bureaus with Spanish law enforcement authorities in an all-out, fullblown search for the president; one that would be designated a national security operation, meaning TOP SECRET on every level. Immediately afterward Daniels had been on a secure phone to the special agent in charge of the Secret Service field office at the U.S. embassy in Paris, asking that the Paris office go on full standby alert in the event additional bodies were needed in Madrid. Soon to be added to the chaotic stew was Ted Langway, an assistant director of the Secret Service at USSS headquarters in Washington, who was already en route to Madrid to liaise with Daniels and then to set up a twenty-four-hour communication with the director of the Secret Service in Washington who would in turn advise the secretary of U.S. Department of Homeland Security, under which the Secret Service now operated.