"You're thinking Dr. Foxx is part of the coup against me."

"Maybe, but there's no proof. All I know is that he was at the center of the subcommittee hearings denying his program was still in existence while at the same time he was still working his tricks on a live human being-Caroline Parsons."

"How is this Picard woman involved?"

"Supposedly she used Reverend Beck to get an introduction to Foxx. Her sister disappeared from Malta two years ago and she thought Foxx might open some doors that would help her to find out what happened, at least that's what she tells me."

"So she's incidental in all this."

"Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. But it's Foxx who's central here. He not only knows the how but the why about Caroline's death, and both of those answers may have a lot to do with the things you're up against."

The president looked away, trying to digest it all. "If you're right, it's the part of the package that's missing, the specifics of what they're planning to do. I know I should be surprised about Chaplain Beck, but nothing surprises me now."

He turned back and Marten could see the anguish in his eyes. "They are planning something horrendous, Mr. Marten. More terrible, I think, than either you or I could imagine. Part of it I know, the rest I don't. The whole thing came out of the blue. It's a major breakdown on my part. I should have known something was happening and seen through it; I didn't. As I said earlier, the timetable for me to do anything about it is incredibly short. If I'm caught, it's nonexistent."

Marten nodded toward the phone, "Maybe she can help. How much I can't guess, but it's more than we have right now."

Harris stared at him. "You said she wanted nothing to do with you. What makes you think you can trust her now?"

"That is a multimillion-dollar question."

"Can you trust her, Mr. Marten?"

"When I left my hotel in Malta I was tailed all the way to Barcelona by a young man. At the airport I was handed off to someone else. He was the dead man in the newspaper photo. He followed Demi and me to a restaurant where we went to talk. Afterward I tried to confront and question him. He ran away and I chased him. That was when he ran in front of the truck."

"You think it was Foxx who had you followed?"

"Yes, to see who I might be reporting to."

"And you're suggesting this Picard woman had something to do with it?"

"That's what I don't know. She might be legitimate and a great help to us or she might bring the whole mountain down. For me it's one thing, for you, Mr. President, it's something else entirely. I guess what I'm saying-the call is yours to make."

Marten saw President Harris hesitate for the slightest moment and then make up his mind. "Ask her to come here now," he said, "but to tell no one where she is going. Give her the room number and tell her to come directly to it. Say nothing about me."

"You're certain?"

"Yes, I'm certain."

• 2:25 A.M.

Room lights out, Marten stood by the window watching for Demi. Below, the street remained a swirl of nightlife. Traffic at a crawl, the sidewalks filled with pedestrians, music floating from cars and open doorways. For Spain, for Barcelona, the night was still a pup.

Marten could hear the shower running in the bathroom, then heard it stop as the president turned off the water. A short while earlier an embarrassed John Henry Harris had asked to borrow Marten's toothbrush, and he'd given it to him without thought. Then he'd asked to use his razor to shave, but Marten suggested he let his beard continue to grow as another level of cover and the president had agreed.

• 2:27 A.M.

Still no sign of Demi.

Marten looked back to the room. Not fifteen feet away, in the confines of the bathroom, the president of the United States was drying himself and dressing, preparing for what was to come next. The whole situation was impossible, even absurd, but it was happening nonetheless. The truth of it made Marten think of his brief conversation with the president just before he'd gone in to shower.

"You told me Dr. Foxx had been directly involved with Caroline's death, that he'd given her some kind of bacteria that had killed her," the president had said. "How did you know that?"

"Caroline had been injected with something by Dr. Stephenson after she broke down following the funeral of her husband and son. She woke up in a clinic where Foxx was, and he seemed to be overseeing her treatment. It was her sense and fear that either Stephenson had given her whatever poisoned her or that Foxx had done it himself at the clinic."

"Sense and fear?"

"Yes."

"Sense and fear mean uncertainty. You were certain when you told me. Why?"

"Because of what Dr. Stephenson told me just before she died. She thought I was one of 'them,' whoever 'they' are, your 'friends' maybe, and that I was going to take her to 'the doctor,' as she put it. She meant Merriman Foxx."

"Just before she died?" the president had stared at him, incredulous. "You were there when she was murdered? When she was decapitated?"

For a long moment Marten said nothing. He was the only one in the world who knew the truth. Then he realized that now, at this point, there was no reason to hold it back, especially from the man who faced him. "She wasn't murdered, Mr. President. She committed suicide."

"Suicide?" The president was stunned.

"On the street near her home. It was night. I waited for her to come home and was trying to question her about what had happened to Caroline. She was frightened, I think more about being taken to 'the doctor' and what he might do to her than anything. She had a pistol. I thought she was going to shoot me. Instead she put it in her mouth and pulled the trigger.

"There was nothing I could do, and I didn't want to explain things to the police because then Foxx would find out about it. So I got out of there fast. The decapitation had to have been done shortly afterward. It meant someone had been watching her."

The president was clearly puzzled. "Why do something like that when she was already dead?"

"I asked myself that and came to the conclusion that a suicide by a physician of her prominence coming so soon after the death of one of her high-profile patients might raise eyebrows and have people start asking questions. Especially when it happened so soon after the deaths of that patient's congressman husband and their son. Murder is different. It's impersonal, it could happen to anyone. Besides there's no way to cover up a suicide done like that, Mr. President. It means whoever did it understood that and simply took her head."

"My God," the president breathed.

"That's what I said."

• 2:30 A.M.

Marten looked back to the street.

Still no sign of Demi.