Marten put down the phone and picked up Klaus Melzer's-Salt and Pepper's-driver's license. He turned it over in his hand, then looked again at his business card. Never mind that Marten had been handed off to him at the airport. Why would a forty-something German civil engineer be tailing him? It made no sense.

Unless-

Marten clicked on his phone and dialed the Munich number for Karlsruhe & Lahr listed on Melzer's business card. Maybe his identification-driver's license, credit cards, business cards-was false, maybe there was no Klaus Melzer or Karlsruhe & Lahr at all. Ten seconds later the second half of his conjecture fell apart:

"Karlsruhe und Lahr, guter nachmittag." Karlsruhe and Lahr, good afternoon, a cheery female voice said.

Five seconds after that the first part went out the window too.

"Klaus Melzer, please," Marten said.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Melzer is out of the office until next week," the voice said in accented English. "Would you like to leave a message?"

"Do you know where he can be reached?"

"He's traveling, sir. May I have him return your call?"

"No, thank you. I'll get back to him."

Marten clicked off.

So there was a Klaus Melzer and there was a Karlsruhe & Lahr. That confirmation brought him back to his original thought-why had a middle-aged German civil engineer seemingly with a good job been following him? Why had the handoff from the young man to Melzer at the airport seemed so professional? Why had he run away when Marten was about to confront him? All he'd had to do was deny whatever Marten accused him of and that would have been that. There was nothing Marten could have done. But he hadn't and now Melzer was dead.

"Dammit," Marten said in frustration then clicked on his phone and tried Demi once more.

He let the phone ring until the hotel operator came on.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Picard is not answering."

"Thanks," Marten said and was about to hang up when he had one more thought. "Has Reverend Beck checked in yet? He was coming in from Malta."

"Let me check, sir." There was a brief pause then the operator came back on. "No, sir. Not yet."

"Thank you."

Marten clicked off then took a determined breath and crossed the room to plug in his cell phone to recharge it. If Demi wasn't answering and Beck hadn't checked in, then where was she? Again he had the disturbing thought that she had already left, maybe to meet Beck, or even Merriman Foxx. If she had, maybe she was not in Barcelona at all but somewhere else. If so, this time she would have covered her tracks well, making sure there would be no trail he could follow.

• 5:58 P.M.

President John Henry Harris watched the countryside turn to suburb and then to city as Altaria train #01138 neared Barcelona. In the distance he could see the sunlight glint off the Mediterranean Sea. In five minutes they were due to arrive at Barcelona-Sants Station. His plan was to transfer to the 6:25 Catalunya Express, which, barring difficulty, would get him into Gerona at 7:39. Once there, there would be no calling Rabbi David Aznar's house for directions because he knew his phones would be monitored by some piece of Hap Daniels's intelligence machinery and that meant he would have to find Rabbi David's house on his own. But he had come this far without being discovered, and he had to trust his luck would hold and he could go the rest of the way without incident.

• 6:08 P.M.

The Altaria pulled into Barcelona-Sants Station five minutes late. John Henry Harris stood with the other passengers as they collected their things.

He nodded to Fernando Alejandro Ponce, his leather-jacketed, beret-wearing artist seat-mate, then followed the others from the train. When he did his heart came up in his throat. Armed, uniformed police had blocked the exits and were checking the identification of everyone leaving the terminal. The lines felt like they were miles long. Harris's only thought was that Hap Daniels- under the directive of the director of the Secret Service in Washington, under orders from the secretary of Homeland Security, under orders from Vice President Hamilton Rogers and the rest of Jake Lowe's "pals"-had put his foot to the accelerator. It meant this sort of thing would be going on all over Spain, if not all of Europe.

• 6:12 P.M.

President Harris stood in the ticket line for the Catalunya Express which was scheduled to depart for Gerona in thirteen minutes. He had purposely not bought a transfer ticket to Gerona in Madrid when he'd paid his fare for Barcelona, simply because he didn't want to alert anyone who might have recognized him, or who might later be questioned, his ticket seller in particular, as to his true destination. He now wished he had. The line to the ticket counter was twenty deep, and the police were walking up and down looking carefully at the people in line. And not just here, but at every ticket window.

• 6:19 P.M.

The line inched forward. People around him mumbled about what was going on. There was fear among them too, with memories of the horror that had gone on at Atocha Station on March 11, 2004, still achingly clear in their memories. Without doubt they were wary about the armed force around them. Many were half expecting a bomb to go off at any second.

• 6:22 P.M.

The line moved closer and Harris could see the ticket sellers in their cages checking the identification of every person buying a ticket, and CNP agents inside the ticket cages with them overseeing the process.

Slowly, easily, he stepped away from the line and walked toward the men's restroom. What he had to do was get out of the building and find some other way to Gerona. What that would be he didn't know, because he was certain every bus and train terminal would be under the same heavy surveillance.

Harris passed a news kiosk. Prominently displayed was ADN, apparently a major Barcelona newspaper. The front page had a photograph of himself leaving the presidential limousine, taken at some point the day before. The headline in Spanish read:

¡HARRIS HUYE DE AMENAZA TERRORISTA EN MADRID!

– HARRIS FLEES TERRORIST THREAT IN MADRID!

Head down he kept on, passing shops, restaurants, and an ungodly number of uniformed police. Finally he reached the men's restroom and went inside, passing a policeman stationed just inside the door. Half a dozen men stood at urinals. Harris went immediately into a stall and closed the door. What to do next? This was a nightmare beyond nightmares. He wished to hell he could wake up from it and find it had all been just that, a gruesome dream. But it wasn't and he knew it. He had to find a way out of the building, even though he knew nothing of Barcelona, let alone how to find some safe transportation to Gerona.

He sat down on the toilet and tried to think. For the moment, at least here, with the stall door closed, he was safe. But that would last only until someone else tried to use it or the policeman stationed at the door became suspicious and came to check on him. His first thought was to take a chance and call Rabbi David in Gerona and ask him to get in his car and drive here, then arrange for a place to meet and hide somewhere nearby until he arrived. But he knew from what was going on in the station that that was out of the question. If he had worried before that the rabbi's phones would be fully monitored there was no doubt of it now. Seemingly every inch of everything everywhere was covered. His pursuers, even if they didn't realize it, were literally steps away from him.

It meant he had to slow things down and take them a step at a time, just as he had at the Ritz. The first move was to find a way out of the station. Once on the streets he could decide the next course of action. To do that he had to do what he had done in Madrid, use his knowledge of how public buildings were constructed and use the station's mechanical interior-the hidden corridors that contained the heating, air-conditioning, plumbing, and electrical systems-as a way out. The way a mouse or rat would find his way to freedom.