• U.S. SECRET SERVICE COMMAND POST, MADRID, 2:30 A.M.

"A woman made the Barcelona hotel calls, sir." Again the voice of Secret Service intelligence specialist Sandra Rodriguez came through Hap Daniels's headset. He was standing in front of a computer screen in the CIA warehouse clicking through an endless stream of reports from the mass of intelligence agencies trying and failing to locate the president.

"She sounded young and was speaking Spanish with a Danish accent. It took a while for Spanish intelligence to run the tapes and make some sense of it."

"What was she trying to find out?" Daniels pressed her.

"She was looking for a man, a hotel employee or guest, she didn't specify. All she had was a name, a Señor Nicholas Marten. Marten with an e not an i."

"Marten?" Hap Daniels said abruptly and looked up. Jake Lowe was staring at him from across the room, Daniels turned back. "Do we know if she located this Nicholas Marten?"

"Yes, sir. He's at the Rivoli Jardín Hotel. Barcelona, 080002."

"Thank you."

Jake Lowe had turned his back to the room and was talking by secure phone to National Security Adviser Jim Marshall in the war room at the U.S. embassy in Madrid.

"We may have something hot," Lowe said lowly and with urgency. "Spanish intel has located a Nicholas Marten at a hotel in Barcelona. Someone made a number of calls trying to find out where he was."

"Marten?" Marshall perked. "The same Marten connected to the Caroline Parsons circumstance?"

"Not certain."

"Do we know who was trying to find him?"

"A woman. We don't know who she is or why she was looking for him. Or even if it's the Nicholas Marten. But if it is, the president certainly would recognize him; he saw him in Parsons's hospital room then asked for more information on him later, and we delivered it."

"Mr. Lowe," Hap Daniels's voice came through a separate channel in his headset and he turned to see Daniels motioning to him, "you might want to look at this."

Immediately Lowe crossed the room to look at the computer screen Daniels, Station Chief Kellner, and Secret Service Assistant Director Ted Langway were staring at. On it was the newspaper photograph of Marten taken on the Barcelona street-the same photo the president had used to identify him.

"From yesterday's special late edition of the Barcelona La Vanguardia. That is Marten," Daniels said definitively.

"You sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure. I was with the president when we saw him at University Hospital."

"We have a confirm on Marten," Lowe said to Marshall through his headset, then looked to Daniels. "Locate him. But that's all. Just locate him and watch him. Don't let him know we're onto him."

Abruptly Daniels turned to Kellner. "You have assets in place in Barcelona?"

"Yes."

"Put them to work."

"Right."

"Hap," Lowe's eyes found Daniels's. "What's your gut tell you? Is the president with him?"

"I want to say yes, but there's no way to know until we get a confirm."

"I want us to do that ourselves."

Daniels's eyebrows furrowed in puzzlement. "I'm not sure I understand."

"We don't know his physical or psychological condition. What we do know is that he's ill and so whatever happens has to be done with extreme delicacy. When we go in it needs to be with people he will instantly recognize. Not strange faces, not CIA or Spanish intelligence," he glanced at Assistant Director Ted Langway, "not even you, Mr. Langway. I'd suggest you stay in Madrid." Lowe looked back to Daniels, "I don't want to make it any worse for him than it already is. If you want a direct order I can get it from the vice president."

"I won't need it, sir."

"Dr. Marshall will want to be there too."

"Dr. Marshall?"

"Yes."

Hap Daniels's eyes held Lowe's for the briefest second,

"Yes, sir," he said and then turned and walked away, speaking into his headset as he went.

"I want a lead car, an armored van set up as an ambulance with two doctors and two EMT techs, and three security tail cars ready in Barcelona within the hour. Have a car pick up Dr. Marshall at the embassy and take him to the airport."

Again he looked to Station Chief Kellner. "Can you get Spanish intelligence to facilitate priority air clearance for a flight to Barcelona?"

"I think so."

"Hap," Lowe was looking directly at him. "How soon can we be in the air?"

"We get clearance, wheels up in twenty minutes."

"Good."

• BARCELONA, RIVOLI JARDÍN HOTEL, 3:00 A.M.

Marten pulled back the curtain in the semidarkness in time to glimpse Demi Picard dodge through traffic and cross the street coming toward the hotel. She wore a light-colored trench coat with a large purse thrown over one shoulder and had a floppy hat pulled low over her forehead. If he hadn't been looking for her she would have been difficult to recognize, which was probably the idea.

Marten let the curtain go and stepped back from the window just as President Harris came out of the bathroom, pulling on his clear-lensed eyeglasses.

"She's just crossed the street. She should be here in a few minutes," Marten said. "How do you want to play it?"

The president stopped and looked at him. He was still without his toupee and had put back on the same khaki pants, blue sport shirt, and brown jacket he had been wearing when Marten first saw him in the room several hours earlier.

"Mr. Marten," he said with an urgency Marten hadn't heard before. "I knew when I came to you I was taking a chance, but I had to find a place out of sight to rest, if even for a short time. Standing in the shower I had a chance to collect my thoughts. It's now three in the morning. Spanish federal police boarded the train I took from Madrid to Barcelona late this afternoon. Very luckily I got away without them recognizing me. The same as when I managed to avoid them in the train station here. The hunt for me, secretive as it will be, will be massive. I know the procedures and agencies the Secret Service will use in trying to bring me in. That means there's every chance that by now they will have some idea where I've gone. It's possible they may even have intercepted the phone calls my female friend made in trying to find you. It won't be long before they put it all together and learn where I am. It means I need to get out of here right away, and the sooner the better."

"To go where?"

"If I told you and they found you, believe me when I say you would tell them."

"Then I can't let them find me, can I?"

The president studied him carefully. "Mr. Marten, you've helped a great deal already. If you try to do more you'll be getting in dangerously over your head."

"I'm already in over my head," Marten half smiled. "I'm probably going to get fired from my job too." The smile vanished, "If they come here looking for you they'll know who I am anyway. You asked for my help, Mr. President, and you still have it," Marten paused, then went on. "Besides, I've come this far because of what happened to Caroline Parsons and in a way so have you. If you're going, I am too."

"You're certain?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then I thank you most gratefully, Mr. Marten. But I also want you to understand something." The urgency in the president's voice was now compounded by a look of almost unbearable anguish, as if for the first time he realized the true enormity of his situation. "Out here, like this, I have nothing of the power of my office to draw upon. I have no authority at all. If they catch me and bring me back they will kill me. That makes me just some poor fellow on the run with the clock ticking down, and at the same time trying to stay alive and keep his country and I think an ungodly number of other countries afloat as well. To do that I have to find out what my 'friends' are planning to do and what they have the ability to do, and then find a way to stop it, whatever it is. Dr. Foxx seems to be a key figure here, maybe even its prime architect. Your friend, this Demi Picard, may be able to help us find him. She might even know where he is."