Whichever it was, whether she was using Beck or he was guiding her into something else, one thing remained unwavering: her determination to get Marten to the monastery at Montserrat and into the hands of Merriman Foxx.

The trouble was that in setting Marten up she had also set up the president. It was a bad situation, and both men knew it. They also knew they had no choice but to proceed. To them Foxx was the key to everything. What he knew they had to find out: the specifics of the plan against the Muslim states, when and where it was to begin, the names of those involved, and for Marten in particular, what he had done to Caroline Parsons. Moreover, the president not only wanted to know the details, he insisted they have them written down-a notepad, scratch paper, anything would do-dated and signed by Foxx. It was a document that, once in hand, would allow him to come out of the shadows without fear. By the time the Secret Service, a CIA team, or Spanish intelligence reached him he would have placed calls (and hopefully faxed copies) to the secretaries-general of NATO and the United Nations and to the editors-in-chief of The Washington Post and The New York Times. Nothing would be kept back, none of it politically couched, including the planned assassinations in Warsaw. It would be news that would explode across the world in seconds, and its ramifications would be enormous-economically, politically, and because of the horror of what it had promised, emotionally. But it had to be done, it was far too grave and far-reaching for anything but the truth.

So, trap or not, and hugely dangerous and immensely difficult as it might be, the attempt to reach the monastery at Montserrat had to be made.

That left only the next problem.

How to get there.

And what to do, when, and if, they did.

• CHANTILLY, FRANCE, 6:44 A.M.

Victor stood in a thick jungle of trees three hundred feet back from the target area. The barrel of his M14 rifle rested in the V of a wooden makeshift monopod and was pointed through the gray mist of early morning toward the thoroughbred practice track called "Coeur de la Forêt. " Even in the chill he was comfortable. He was a professional killer and this was what he did. And what they asked him to do. And what they fully expected he would do. Not could do, as if he were a low-level employee, but what he would fully execute as a marksman, as a professional.

"Victor." Richard's calm and soothing voice came over his headset.

"Yes, Richard."

"How are you feeling?"

"Fine."

"Not cold or damp."

"No, Richard. Just fine."

"The horses and jockeys are just leaving the training facility. In approximately thirty-five seconds they will be at the start of the practice track. Once there they will get their final instructions from the trainer. Ten to fifteen seconds after that the practice race will begin. It should take them about seventy seconds to reach where you are. Are you alright with that, Victor?"

"Yes, Richard."

"Afterward you know what to do."

"Yes, Richard."

"Thank you, Victor."

"No, Richard, thank you."

• BARCELONA, 6:50 A.M.

Barefoot, pant legs rolled up, coffee cups in hand, and looking like early-rising tourists on holiday, Nicholas Marten and President of the United States John Henry Harris walked across the wet sand of low tide watching the first light of day break over the Mediterranean. Above and behind them was an outcropping of rocky cliffs that shielded the desolate stretch of beach where they were from the dirt road they had come in on. An X on a map would suggest they were about fifteen miles north of Barcelona somewhere between Costa Daurada to the south and Costa Brava to the north.

Isolated and away from the city proper, it gave them a brief respite, one carefully calculated to give the security forces time to fully execute their roadblocks and checkpoints, and then, coming up empty, to hopefully stand down or at least to ease their presence and let the city come back to some semblance of normal while they regrouped, re-worked their tactics and brought in more manpower. And it was just that window Marten and the president would use to make their move toward Montserrat. Both knew that once that second wave began, the scope and size of it would be unprecedented. John Henry Harris was not simply a missing person, he was a missing president of the United States, and the determination of the Secret Service, CIA, FBI, NSA, Spanish intelligence and Spanish police forces to find him and bring him to what they assumed was safety would make his, and therefore Marten's, chance of escaping zero at best.

Marten glanced back. In the dim morning light he could see the protective cliffs above them and the small turnaround at the end of the road where the black Mercedes limousine that had brought them there was parked. Standing beside it watching them was its dark-suited middle-aged driver, the affable Miguel Balius, a Barcelonan raised in Australia who had later returned to his native city. It was Balius's keen knowledge of Barcelona's streets and alleys that had helped them avoid the maze of police checkpoints and roadblocks and get them to the remote beach where they were now. That they had come this far was due to Balius's seemingly wholly naïve creativity, Marten's original idea, and Demi's smooth execution of it.

They had reached the Hotel Regente Majestic at 4:50 A.M. and gone immediately inside, Demi to the front desk and Marten and President Harris into the men's restroom just off the lobby, where they had cleaned up and waited. What Marten had suggested in the last moments before they reached the hotel was, if it worked, outrageous, but no more outrageous than the situation they were in-essentially trapped inside the city of Barcelona while Spanish security forces demanded identification from nearly everyone trying to leave it.

Marten's idea had come from the simple reality of their situation-they had to remain free of the massive net surrounding them and at the same time get to the mountain monastery at Montserrat, arriving sometime around noon. To that end he created a scenario that with luck and if played properly just might work. Demi began it the moment they entered the hotel when she went directly to the front desk asking to see the concierge. The following is what she told Marten and the president she had said:

"My two cousins came in on an early-morning flight from New York for a family reunion. I went to meet them at the airport. It took a half hour to find them because the airline lost their luggage and they were off trying to locate it. They never did. It's still lost. On the way here we were caught up in whatever dreadful thing is going on in the city. It took an hour to get through one checkpoint. We had to show identification, everything."

"The authorities thought they had some terrorists trapped in a hotel not far from here," the concierge informed her. "They escaped. Or that's what we've been told, but they are still looking for them and that is the reason for all the chaos. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience."

"It's not your fault, of course, and we all must do our part to stop these people. My problem, however, is not terrorists but my cousins. I don't like them to begin with. On top of that they are irritable and over-tired, neither can sleep, and one is crazier than the other. They want to spend the day sightseeing. I have other things to do. I'm also exhausted and want to sleep. I was thinking of a limousine, just have someone take them wherever they want to go, to see whatever they want to see and bring them back later this evening. Is that possible?"

"You want to do it now, at this time of day?"