"Church?"

"The cathedral of Barcelona."

Marten smiled, "Of course, the cathedral. Thank you."

"You want to go there?"

"Yes, thank you."

"Well, you are in luck, as your friends were."

Marten was puzzled, "How do you mean?"

"Usually the cathedral is only open until seven. But this month until ten. It is a celebration. It was closed for a long time for restoration but has now just reopened." The doorman smiled, "So you want to go still?"

"Yes."

The doorman motioned for a taxi. A moment later it arrived. Marten gave him a ten-euro tip, then got in, and the cab pulled away.

• 7:40 P.M.

John Henry Harris stood in the doorway of a convenience store watching the woman work her section of the street. She was blond, with pale white skin that was almost porcelain. Twenty at most, she looked Scandinavian or German, maybe even Russian. Her nationality didn't matter; her profession did. With a revealing halter top and short, tight skirt, the way she walked up and down between cars every time traffic stopped, there was little doubt she was out there for hire and for the right price would probably do almost anything he or anyone else asked. And that was what John Harris needed now, someone to do what he asked-with no questions whatsoever.

He had no idea where he was except that it was a dozen or more blocks from the train station. A place he'd escaped from not as planned by using inner service corridors, because the few he found had either been locked or strongly guarded. What he had done instead was take an enormous chance and set fire to the rear of a newspaper kiosk that was close to an exit door; a diversion, as the military or police would call it. And it had worked. The attention of Spanish security forces checking IDs at the nearest door had briefly been drawn to the flames and the near-panic from an already nervous public. Harris had calculated his timing and watched the guards rush from the door, and within seconds he was out on the street and gone.

"Señorita," he said as the light changed and traffic moved forward and his girl sashayed from the street and onto the curb. She looked at him and smiled, then came closer.

"¿Habla español?" Do you speak Spanish? he asked, hoping to hell she did. Not wanting to use English unless it was absolutely necessary.

"Sí," she came a little closer.

He peered over the rims of his glasses. "Necesito hablar con Ud. un momento." I would like a little of your time.

"Sí. seguro." Sure. She grinned seductively and adjusted her halter top so that he could see more of her breasts.

"No es lo que usted piensa." It's not what you think, he said quietly.

"Da igual. Si significa dinero, lo haré." Whatever it is, if it pays money, I will do it.

"Bueno," he said. "Bueno."

• 7:55 P.M.

Marten's taxi turned down one street and then another in slow traffic, moving back into the Gothic Quarter, where he had been earlier in the day. He was still up in the air about Demi, still wary of what she was doing, still unsure if he could trust her. That she hadn't answered her phone the several times he'd tried to reach her and after he'd specifically told her he'd call didn't help. Nor did the fact that whatever Beck's mood had been in Malta he'd managed to calm down enough to ask her to follow him to Barcelona, and that now they seemed all buddy-buddy. It made him think that no matter what she'd confided to him about the witches and the sign of Aldebaran at the restaurant, she had done it simply to placate him, hoping it would be enough to make him go away and let her concentrate on staying in Beck's good graces so she wouldn't be left behind when he went to meet Merriman Foxx. It was a thought that made him wonder if that's where the three were going now, to meet Foxx at the cathedral. It also raised the question of who the woman in black was.

• 8:07 P.M.

Marten felt a presence and looked up. The taxi driver was watching him in the mirror. He'd glanced at him more than once before and now he was openly staring at him. Suddenly Marten had the feeling he'd stumbled into some kind of trap, that either the cab driver was Salt and Pepper's replacement or was a stringer like the Four Cats waiter, someone hired to look for him.

"What are you looking at?" he said.

"No hablo English good," the man smiled.

"Me," Marten pointed to his face, "you recognize me? I am familiar to you?" If this man was trouble and taking him somewhere other than to the cathedral he wanted it to come out now, so he could do something about it.

"Sí," the man said, suddenly understanding, "Sí." Immediately his hand slid to the seat beside him and he picked up a copy of an evening newspaper. It was folded back and open to an interior page.

"You Samaritan. You Samaritan."

"What? What are you talking about?" Marten was thrown off.

The man pushed the paper over the seat. Marten took it and looked at it. What he saw was a large photo of himself bent over the sprawled body of his Salt and Pepper man, Klaus Melzer, with the truck that had hit him in the background.

"Buen Samaritano sin sentido-el hombre de la calle ya estaba muerto," the caption read. Marten didn't understand the Spanish but he got the gist of it-he was a good Samaritan for no reason, the man in the street was already dead.

"Sí, Samaritano," Marten handed the paper back, swearing to himself as he did. Obviously someone in the crowd had taken a picture and sold it to the newspaper. They didn't have his name and there wasn't a story, so at least it wasn't about his having pilfered the dead man's wallet. Still, he didn't like it. It was bad enough he'd had to register at his hotel under his own name, but with his picture spread over the city like that it would make him all that much easier to find.

Abruptly the taxi sped up, traveled a half block, then turned down another street, moving deeper into the Gothic Quarter, which he now realized was not just a tourist area, but a sprawling ancient neighborhood where narrow streets emptied into other narrow streets and then into squares. It was a maze one could easily become lost in, something that might have happened to Klaus Melzer, a German, unfamiliar with the city, doing nothing more than trying to get away from a man pursuing him and running directly into the path of an oncoming truck. It was something that again made him wonder why Foxx, or whoever had hired the salt-and-pepper civil engineer, had picked him over a local and why Melzer had agreed to do it.

Just then the taxi slowed and stopped, its driver pointing toward a large square. Hotels and shops lined one side, while on the other stood a massive, ornate stone edifice with a complex series of lighted spires and bell towers that reached high into the evening sky.

"The cathedral, señor," the cab driver said. "Catedral de Barcelona."