"Your housekeeper."

"Yes, sir. Although I'm not sure why he called the house. He knew I would be at the office, we are far behind on a critical project. This one," Graff gestured at house and the land around them.

Agent Harrison stared at Graff for a moment longer, then glanced at the surrounding countryside. "Nice piece of dirt. Don't like the house though, style doesn't fit."

"I agree with you, sir."

"Thank you for your time, Mr. Graff."

With that Security Service agents Harrison and Russell turned and started back through the mud for their car.

"Is he in trouble?" Graff called after them. "Is Mr. Marten in trouble with the government?"

There was no reply.

• MADRID, 10:15 A.M.

Peter Fadden had ridden the city bus for two stops, gotten off, then walked a half block where he turned down a side street and entered a small café sprinkled with a few midmorning customers. Immediately he went to the men's restroom. Several moments later he came out, glanced down the hallway into the kitchen and established that there was a rear entrance and way out if he needed it. Satisfied, he went back into the main room and took a seat at a table where he could see the door and ordered a cup of coffee.

He had his wallet, his passport, his BlackBerry, and, for the moment at least, his life and his freedom. The rest-his suitcase and his briefcase containing his laptop-he'd left in the taxi, things the men who'd come after him would now have in their possession. It was the laptop that concerned him most. The hard drive contained all of his notes: his interviews with hotel staff people at the Madrid Ritz, his collection of material about Merriman Foxx, Dr. Lorraine Stephenson, the Washington, D.C., clinic where Caroline Parsons had been taken before she was admitted to University Hospital, and his suspicions about the manhunt in Barcelona and the possible fate of the president.

The problem now was what to do about all of it.

At this point he desperately wanted to get in touch with his editor at The Washington Post but he knew that was problematical at best. The only way the men who had come after him could have known who he was was because they had been tapped into the frequency of Marten's cell phone. It meant they had heard their conversation, probably even recorded it. Worse, it meant they had the number of his BlackBerry, which was no doubt how they found him at his hotel and probably the reason the first taxi had driven away without picking him up-because the second had a driver who worked for them and would do as he was told. It was the reason he had taken the side street as he had and then pulled the taxi to the curb and run away.

Now that they had his BlackBerry frequency they would be monitoring it, so he couldn't use it without giving his position away. Moreover, because he had said what he had about the president and Mike Parsons's committee and Merriman Foxx, he could be all but certain the phone numbers and e-mail addresses of anyone listed in his BlackBerry Rolodex-nearly everyone he knew in Washington and in Post bureaus around the world-would be under surveillance as well. Who was doing all this, he had no idea, but it had to be at a very high level if they were monitoring Marten's cell phone and then, so soon afterward, sending the crewcuts after him. The business of the taxi cabs meant they hadn't been sent to have a simple conversation with him. That they could have done at the hotel.

Topping off everything was the element of time. Whatever was happening was happening fast. If the president was in trouble, he was in trouble right now. It meant Fadden had to find someone out of the loop. Someone who had a prestigious voice that would be listened to and whom he could trust unconditionally needed to be told about it as quickly as possible.

• 10:22 A.M.

Fadden entered a small tobacco shop four doors down from the café. He glanced around, then went up to the only other person in there, the shop's heavyset proprietor sitting behind the counter smoking a cigar.

"Do you speak English?"

"Poco." A little. The man said.

"I would like to buy a phone card."

"Sí," the man said, "sí," and stood up.

• WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND. 10:27 A.M.

Dr. Matunde Ngotho, executive director of the WHO/OMS Human Genetics Program, had just left a Saturday-morning investigative conference and was entering his office on Avenue Appia when his cell phone rang.

"Matunde here," he said, clicking on.

"Matunde, it's Peter Fadden."

"Peter!" the research doctor smiled broadly at the voice of his old and dear friend. "Where are you? In Geneva I hope. Yes?"

Matunde waited for a response. He got none.

"Peter?" he said. "Peter, are you there?"

Peter Fadden stood frozen in place, staring wide-eyed at the tall crew-cut man standing just behind him at the street corner public telephone. For some reason he felt cold though the temperature outside was nearly eighty degrees. Now the crewcut reached in and lifted the receiver from his hand and hung it up on the phone's cradle. Vaguely Fadden remembered reaching his old college roommate in Geneva. Remembered hearing his voice and at the same time feeling a sharp pain near his right kidney, as if a needle had suddenly been inserted and then withdrawn. He saw an umbrella in the crewcut's hand. He wondered why. It wasn't raining. In fact there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

• 10:30 A.M.

Nicholas Marten stared vacantly out the window as Miguel Balius maneuvered the limousine over a narrow bridge spanning a muddy river. A full minute passed and then two, then Marten's focus abruptly sharpened as if he had just completed a thought process. With a glance at President Harris, he touched the intercom button.

"Miguel?"

"Yes, sir."

"You must have been to Montserrat before."

"Many times."

"What's it like?"

"Like? Like a small city built into a mountainside half a mile straight up from the valley floor. A feat of incredible engineering."

The president sat forward, suddenly aware that Marten was gathering information and in the process working on a plan for what they might do when they got there.

"There are many buildings, some centuries old; the basilica, a museum, a hotel that has a restaurant, there's a library, a refectory, too many to list." Miguel bubbled with the enthusiasm of a tour guide, alternately looking at Marten in the mirror and watching the road in front of him as he drove. "You can drive to it or reach it by cable car from the valley floor. A funicular railway takes you higher into the cliffs if you want. All around are pathways that go off in every direction. Some have ancient chapels along the way, but most are long abandoned and nothing but ruins. The saying goes there are 'a thousand and one paths that crisscross the mountain.' You won't be disappointed. But be warned, it will be crowded. It always is. Montserrat has become as much a tourist stop as a religious retreat."

"There's a chance we might meet some friends there," Marten dug deeper. "You said there's a restaurant. If we wanted to have lunch, is it just a sandwich shop or is there more to it?"

"No, not a sandwich shop. A regular restaurant. Tables and chairs, everything."

"Do you know if they serve soft drinks? Colas, mineral water, things like that? I ask because one of the gentlemen has a personal medical situation and has certain needs because of it."

"Sure, colas, mineral water, coffee, wine, beer, anything you want."

The president listened carefully. Marten was asking very specific questions, as if he knew precisely what he wanted.

"Is there a restroom, you know, a toilet, nearby? I wouldn't want to suggest something that wouldn't be appropriate for his condition."