"You said strong political influence, Mr. President? What if this is more than just something between your 'friends' and Merriman Foxx? What if it involves the witches too? What if the Machiavelli Covenant is not some rumored codicil to The Prince but real? Something a particular group took as its bible and put into practice? What if your secretive cult of sorcerers actually did exist? What if it still does? And not just in Europe but in Washington?"

President Harris took a deep breath and Marten could see the awful pressure of what was happening beginning to take its toll, both as a man and as president. "If there is truly an answer to that, perhaps Dr. Foxx will be able to provide it." The president looked at Marten for a moment longer then turned toward the window to stare at the passing countryside. If anything, he seemed even more troubled and introspective than before.

"We are going to Montserrat, Mr. Marten, hopefully to find Dr. Foxx and confront him," he said, still staring off. "Never mind what he did as a scientist, the experiments he performed, the weapons he developed-he was also a professional soldier most of his life." Now the president turned from the window to look at Marten directly. "He may be in his late fifties, but from what I've read about him he's fit and strong. And tough. The damnable project we have to know about he's probably been working on for years, developing it to the point where it's now ready for use. Why do we think he will tell us anything about it? There is no reason to believe he will say anything at all. Why should he? If I were him and in the same situation I certainly wouldn't." A look of despair came over him. "I wonder, Mr. Marten, if after everything, we are not prepared for the adversary we may be lucky enough to face. If he will just laugh at our questions and in the end we will have nothing."

"I think, Mr. President," Marten said quietly and with strength, "it will depend on where and under what circumstances the questions are put to him."

• HOTEL OPERA, MADRID, 9:22 A.M

"Muchas gracias," Peter Fadden nodded appreciatively to the front desk clerk. Then, scrawling his name on the credit card receipt, he picked up his bag and headed for the front door, already late for his eleven o'clock flight to Barcelona.

Outside, the hotel doorman signaled for a taxi. It pulled up and stopped, then immediately drove off without a fare. Fadden and the doorman exchanged surprised glances; then the doorman signaled for the next cab in line. Like the first cab, it pulled up and stopped. Only this time the driver did not drive off. Instead he got out and looked at the doorman for a directive.

"Aeropuerto de Barajas," Fadden said before the doorman could answer. Then he tipped him, pulled the rear passenger door open, tossed his bag onto the seat, and climbed in after it. Seconds later the taxi pulled away.

• BARCELONA POLICE HEADQUARTERS, SAME TIME

Hap Daniels and Special Agent Bill Strait were, like the rest of the Secret Service contingent who had flown up from Madrid, physically and mentally drained and feeling grubby as hell from the more than twenty-four hours of intense, nonstop insanity. While rooms had been reserved for them at the Hotel Colón across from the cathedral of Barcelona, temporary sleeping quarters had been set up here in a basement-level meeting room next to the central command headquarters, where a group of thirty-six Barcelona police, Spanish intel, CIA, and U.S. Secret Service agents labored over a communications system jammed with information coming in from checkpoints and search teams. A group overseen by Hap himself.

"Twenty minutes," he said to the command team, flashing ten fingers two times. "Twenty minutes is all I need."

Immediately he motioned for Bill Strait and went into the sleeping area, where a half dozen other Secret Service agents napped on hastily set-up cots and where he planned to lie down and close his eyes for those precious twenty minutes.

Strait came in and Hap closed the door, then walked his deputy to a far corner and away from the others.

"What's going on is not foul play," he said in a sotto voice. "It's not the work of terrorists or some foreign government or agents. This is 'Crop Duster,' the POTUS, trying to get away."

"I don't understand your point, Hap," Strait said in the same low voice. "We've been going on that premise since Madrid. He's ill."

"If he's ill I'm a three-legged donkey. He shinnied out of the Ritz's air-conditioning ducts. Took off a hairpiece we never knew he had and made it from Madrid to Barcelona without being seen. He found Marten without anybody knowing, and he got out of the damn hotel and out of the city right under our noses. This is not somebody who's ill. It's somebody who's determined as hell not to be caught and is being damned smart about it."

"People do all kinds of things when they're screwed up, Hap. Even presidents."

"We don't know he's screwed up. All we know is what we've been told by Lowe and Dr. Marshall. And unless there's something they're not telling us, they're just guessing. Either that or it's what they want us to believe."

"Want us to believe?"

"Yes."

Strait stared at him. "You're tired. Tell me that in a half-hour when you wake up."

"I'm telling you right now."

"Okay, then what the hell is going on?"

Just then an agent on the cot nearest them coughed and rolled over in his sleep. Daniels glanced around the room, then led Strait through an adjoining door and into a vacant men's restroom.

"I don't know what's going on," he said the moment they were alone. "But I think back to that late meeting at Evan Byrd's house in Madrid. The people who were there, the vice president and almost the entire cabinet, Crop Duster wasn't expecting them to be there, and he wasn't the same when he came out of the talks with them. The whole ride back to the hotel he was quiet and distant, never said a word. A few hours later he's gone, lighting his way with matches he picked up at Byrd's house. Not long afterward he ends up with this Nicholas Marten who he asked me to check up on before any of this began."

Daniels took off his jacket and loosened his tie, "I'm going to lie down and close my eyes for twenty minutes. Maybe when I wake up, things will be clearer. In the meantime I want you to go outside, go someplace you won't be overheard, use your cell phone, and call Emilio Vasquez at Spanish intel in Madrid. Ask him to very quietly put an electronic intercept on Evan Byrd's phones. He might not like it, but tell him it's a personal favor to me. If he has trouble doing it, tell him I'll call him myself when I get up."

"You think Evan Byrd has something to do with this?"

"I don't know. I don't even have a thought about what this is. I just want to see who he's in touch with and what they have to say to each other."