"How much longer before we get to the monastery?"

"Without roadblocks or other problems, a half hour or so."

"How far by miles?"

"The route we're going twenty or so, sir. Mostly uphill."

"Thank you."

The president clicked off the intercom and took a breath, then looked to Marten. He was as drawn and grave and intense as Marten had ever seen him. "Miguel seems decent and honest. He knows the land, the roads, and the people. He knows intricacies of the language I do not. Under the circumstances he seems far more an asset than a liability."

• BARCELONA, 11:05 A.M.

Armed with the MI5 information about Marten's limousine number and a fake business card he kept for a variety of "necessary circumstances," Hap Daniels stepped from a taxi, paid the driver and waited until the cab pulled away. Then he turned and started toward the garagelike structure that housed Limousines Barcelona.

Minutes earlier he'd been in the cafeteria at Barcelona Police Headquarters where Bill Strait had confirmed he'd talked to Emilio Vasquez at Spanish intel in Madrid and asked him in Hap's name to very quietly put electronic surveillance on all of Evan Byrd's telephone communications.

"It has to do with the effort at hand," Vasquez had said without emotion, a statement more than a question.

"Yes."

"Considering the situation, if Tigre Uno asks, then it will be done."

"N-O," Strait said.

"N-O, of course." N-O. Not Officially. There would be no official tapping of Evan Byrd's phones. It was to be done covertly with anyone involved fully aware and prepared to deny it had ever been done.

Immediately afterward Hap finished his coffee and left, telling Strait he needed a walk to think things over. If they needed him they had his BlackBerry, his emergency pager, everything. He walked for three deliberate blocks before turning a corner and hailing a taxi. Asking the driver to take him to a cross street address that was within short walking distance of Limousines Barcelona, he suddenly began to understand what POTUS, or "Crop Duster," must be feeling and had felt when he'd crawled through the air ducts at the Hotel Ritz; that he had no idea who he could trust. And for Hap that meant Bill Strait, even the entire Secret Service detail. Maybe they were wholly innocent but there was no way for him to be absolutely certain.

What he did know was that he didn't trust Chief of Staff Tom Curran; didn't trust Crop Duster's chief political adviser Jake Lowe; didn't trust National Security Adviser Dr. James Marshall; and he didn't like the overtly opportunistic feel of the vice president suddenly flying into Barcelona for a twenty-minute photo and sound bite op and then retreating to Madrid and Evan Byrd's home. It immediately put VPOTUS alongside the others on his "do not trust" list.

Now, thinking about it, he remembered who else was at the late-night meeting at Byrd's residence: Secretary of State David Chaplin, Secretary of Defense Terrence Langdon, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, United States Air Force General Chester Keaton.

"Christ," he said under his breath. What if they were all in this together?

But in what? And what had they asked or demanded of the president that had put him so into a corner that he had no other choice but to run?

• 11:10 A.M.

Romeo J. Brown

Private Investigator

Long Island City, NY

Limousines Barcelona's day manager, smartly dressed, forty-year-old Beto Nahmans, turned the business card over in his hand then looked to Hap Daniels sitting in one of two stylish chrome and black leather chairs across from his desk.

"I understand you have the mobile number and license plate number of one of our cars," Nahmans said in crisp English.

Daniels nodded. "I've been retained by a security firm investigating insurance fraud. We believe one of the people we are following is a passenger in that limousine. It's my job to find him and give him the chance to voluntarily return to the U.S. for prosecution before we ask that he be taken into custody."

"And what might this person's name be?"

"Marten. Nicholas Marten. Marten with an e."

Nahmans swiveled in his chair, punched a series of numbers into a keyboard, and then looked at the computer screen in front of him.

"I'm sorry, sir. We have no record of a Nicholas Marten as a passenger in the vehicle you are referring to. Or any other for that matter."

"No?"

"No, sir."

Daniels's manner hardened. "That's not an answer I like."

"It's what we have," Nahmans smiled faintly. "I'm afraid it's all I can tell you."

Hap Daniels sighed and looked at the floor, then tugged at an ear and looked back. "What if I were to have Spanish intelligence ask for that information?"

"The answer would be the same. I apologize."

"Suppose they presented an official document requiring you to submit a list of each and all of your clients for the past two years. Their names. Where they were picked up, who was with them, how long they were gone, and what address they were returned to."

"I don't think that would be legal." Uncertainty flashed through Beto Nahmans's eyes and Daniels took full advantage of it.

"Would you like to find out?"

Three minutes later Daniels walked out of Limousines Barcelona. Day manager Nahmans had given him three names. A Cousin Jack. A Cousin Harold. And Demi Pi-card, a woman who had ordered the limousine a little before seven that morning, charging it to her room at the Hotel Regente Majestic.

• 11:15 A.M.

Miguel Balius stood wide-eyed and in shadow next to a broken-down table in the corner of what had once been some kind of stone millhouse. Above him most of the roof was open to the sky, while outside, a roaring stream passed just feet from what at one time must have been a supporting wall.

"It's alright, Miguel. Take a deep breath. Relax. No bad men here." Cousin Jack leaned against the far corner of the same table talking easily. He no longer wore the glasses he had sported from the beginning when Miguel first picked them up at the Hotel Regente Majestic. He also had a full head of hair, or rather a perfectly fitting hairpiece Miguel had not seen before. That was until "Cousin Jack" had stepped from the rear seat of the limousine moments earlier suddenly transformed into the man the entire world recognized as the president of the United States.

"Discreet, Miguel, discreet," Cousin Harold, Nicholas Marten, urged gently from behind.

"Discreet, yes, sir," Miguel breathed, his entire being glued to the man in front of him. At the cousins' request he had driven off the main road and taken a dirt road through the woods to the edge of a stream and the remains of this stone building where he'd parked the Mercedes. The cousins, it seemed, had wanted to wade in a "Spanish stream" as they'd earlier waded in the Mediterranean. At the time the request seemed no more odd than any of their other behavior. Then Cousin Jack had emerged from the car, his hairpiece on and without his glasses, and said:

"Miguel, my name is John Henry Harris, and I am the president of the United States. This is Nicholas Marten. We need your help."

Miguel Balius said simply, humbly, and instantaneously, "What can I do for you, sir?"

• BARCELONA, HOTEL REGENTE MAJESTIC. 11:20 A.M.

Romeo J. Brown

Private Investigator

Long Island City, NY

The concierge studied Hap Daniels's business card. "Insurance fraud?"

"In the U.S., yes, sir."

The concierge pressed his fingertips together, "Ms. Picard is a guest here. She ordered the limousine this morning for people she said were her cousins. They had just flown in from New York, were jet-lagged and could not sleep, and wanted to see the sights of Barcelona."