The Secret Service's first presumption would be that he had been a victim of foul play and would have acted accordingly. By now the CIA, FBI and NSA would be wholly involved. Madrid would have been scoured by Spanish intelligence and the Madrid state police. A larger search would have been expanded to include all of Europe and North Africa, with another team working out of the Rome field office covering the Middle East and into Russia and other former Soviet bloc countries. All of it done under blackout orders, or as they would call it, "under the cover of night." Yet by now they would have enough information to be reasonably certain of what had really happened, that he had gone out on his own. In result an angered Jake Lowe and National Security Adviser Jim Marshall would have made a convincing case that he had done it because something was gravely wrong, that he had suffered a mental breakdown of some kind. It was the only story they could make work, but it was a good one because, for the people responsible for protecting him, the whole thing would rise above the horror of the president being kidnapped to what Lowe and company would play as an achingly human story of the most powerful man in the world come apart.

Consequently everyone, from the group that had been in Evan Byrd's Madrid home the night before to the secretary of Homeland Security to the director of the Secret Service and on down would do everything in their power to make sure he was found and brought home and out of harm's way as quickly as possible, with only a few very select people having any knowledge at all of what was really going on.

"Home and out of harm's way" meant he would be delivered to Jake Lowe and company, who would already have arranged for him to be placed in their care. Once that happened he knew the rest. He would immediately be spirited to a place remote enough and safe enough to isolate him and then kill him-a massive stroke or heart attack or something equally convincing.

The sound of the door opening at the far end of the car made Harris look up. Two of the armed, uniformed men who had boarded the train at Lleida entered and stood there surveying the passengers as the door closed behind them. Harris could see they were members of the CNP or Cuerpo Nacional de Policía, the Spanish federal police. Automatic weapons slung over their shoulders, they stood silently for a moment longer and then slowly started forward, the first CNP studying the passengers on the right side of the car; the second, the travelers to the left. Halfway down, the first CNP stopped and looked at a male passenger wearing a broad-brimmed hat, then asked to see his identification. The other CNP came over and watched as the man complied. The first CNP studied the man's ID, then handed it back, and the two continued on down the aisle.

Harris watched them come, then looked to his newspaper. There was little doubt they were looking for him, checking anyone who had even a remote resemblance to him or, in the case of the man with the hat, that they couldn't clearly identify.

They drew closer and he could feel his heart rate pick up, feel sweat bead up on his upper lip. He kept his head down, reading, hoping they would pass on by and go into the next car. Suddenly he saw a polished boot stop next to him.

"You," the CNP said in Spanish. "What is your name? Where do you live?"

His heart in his mouth, Harris looked up. The CNP was not looking at him but at the man in the beret dozing next to him. Slowly the man raised the beret and looked up. By now the second CNP had joined the first. Harris felt like a lamb in the presence of two starving lions. All they had to do was turn their attention to him.

"What is your name? Where do you live?" the first CNP snapped again.

"Fernando Alejandro Ponce. I live at number sixty-two Carrer del Bruc in Barcelona," the beret said in Spanish. "I am an artist!" Suddenly he was getting indignant. "A painter! What do you know of art? What do you want with me anyway?"

"Identification," the first CNP said firmly. By now everyone in the car was looking their way.

The second CNP unslung his automatic rifle and slowly, angrily, Fernando Alejandro Ponce reached into his leather jacket and slid out some kind of identification card. He handed it to the first CNP.

Abruptly he looked to Harris. "Why don't you ask this man his name? And where he lives? Demand his identification? It's only fair! Go ahead, ask him!"

Jesus, God, Harris thought and held his breath, waiting for the CNP to take up the man's challenge and do as he demanded. The CNP looked at Fernando Alejandro's ID card, then handed it back.

"Well, are you going to ask him?" Angrily Fernando Alejandro waved his ID card at Harris.

"Go back to sleep, painter," the CNP said. Then, with a glance at Harris, he turned, and with his companion, continued on down the car. A moment later they went out the door at the far end.

Alejandro's eyes followed them all the way, then shot back to Harris. "¡Cabrones! ¿En todo Caso, ¿a quiéndiablos están buscando?" he snarled. Bastards! Who the hell are they looking for anyway?

"No tengo idea." No idea. Harris shrugged. "No tengo idea en absoluto." No idea at all.

• BARCELONA, 5:00 P.M.

Twenty minutes after the accident in the Gothic Quarter Nicholas Marten quietly checked out of the Hotel Regente Majestic, apologizing to the sympathetic desk clerk still on duty and saying his newspaper had abruptly changed his assignment. Graciously she canceled his credit card deposit and tore up the receipt. Five minutes afterward he was clear of the hotel and back on the street carrying his small traveling bag, never letting Demi know what he had done. Clearly there was no way to know if Salt and Pepper had been called to the restaurant by the waiter or if he had tracked Marten to the Regente or if someone from the hotel had alerted him and he'd tailed him from there, but by checking out as he had he'd left no clear trail for anyone to follow.

Nonetheless they knew he was in Barcelona, and with Salt and Pepper dead it was only a matter of time before they sent someone else to take his place. Someone who would be able to recognize him but whom he would not know. A stranger. The only advantage he had, if it was an advantage at all, was that now he knew who Salt and Pepper had been: Klaus Melzer, 455 Ludwigstrasse, Munich, Germany, a civil engineer.

Marten had known he was dead the minute he saw the savage dent in the truck's grillwork and the way his body was sprawled on the pavement in front of the vehicle. Feeling his carotid artery for a pulse had confirmed it. The rest, the pleading to the crowd to call an ambulance, the opening of his jacket to feel for a heartbeat, then the closing of his jacket and the second plea for an ambulance had all been show. He'd seen the slight bulge in the man's sport coat when he'd first bent over him. That was what he had wanted and what he had taken as he left, Salt and Pepper's wallet. Inside he'd found his German driver's license, credit cards and several business cards with his name and his firm's name: Karlsruhe & Lahr, Bauingenieure, Brunnstrasse 24, Munich.

• 5:44 P.M.

Marten checked into the Rivoli Jardín Hotel. He was still in the Gothic Quarter but several long blocks south of the Regente Majestic. Again, and with no other choice, he used his own name and identification to register. Ten minutes later he was unpacked and on his cell phone trying to get through to Peter Fadden in London. Instead of reaching the Washington Post writer he got his voice mail saying he was not available and to please leave word. Marten did, asking Fadden to call him as soon as he could. Then he clicked off and dialed the Hotel Regente Majestic asking for Demi's room. The phone rang through but there was no answer. He clicked off without leaving a message and with the gnawing feeling that maybe it had been a mistake to let her go. She'd tried to get rid of him before and was angry all over again after the episode at the Four Cats, and what had he done but put her in a cab and send her off? It made no difference what she'd promised, all she had to do was check out of the hotel and there was every chance he'd never see her again. On top of that there was still that something about her, her manner, the sense he'd had before that she was strangely unconnected and that everything she was about had to do with something else. Whether that had to do with her missing sister, or whether the whole thing about her was made up and it was something else entirely, was impossible to tell. Whatever it was added to the discomfort he felt about her now.