"One man was older and nearly bald. The other tall and in his early thirties."

"Yes."

"Where is Ms. Picard now?"

"I believe she left the hotel some time ago," the concierge shifted positions behind the front desk.

"Do you know where she went?"

"I have told you all I know, señor."

Daniels stared at him; it was the same "privacy of clients" treatment he'd received at the limousine company. Only here he could hardly threaten a visit by Spanish intelligence. The hotel, he guessed, probably had three hundred rooms. The argument over a threat to have Spanish intelligence, or tax or local civil authorities demand an accounting of who had stayed there and why over even a short period would, at the very best, be time consuming, and time was something he had precious little of.

"Muchas gracias," he said finally, and started for the door, then turned back, "I wonder if you could tell me the time?"

The man looked at him.

"The time of day?" Daniels tapped his watch. "It stopped." Hap leaned in earnestly, resting his hand on the counter in front of him, the corner of a hundred-euro bill sticking out from under it.

"This Ms. Picard," Hap said quietly. "What does she look like?"

The concierge smiled and looked at his own watch, then leaned in and lowered his voice. "Very attractive. French, a professional photographer. Short dark hair. Navy blazer, tan slacks. Cameras over one shoulder and small equipment bag over the other. She left with a middle-aged African-American male and an older European woman in a white van with the lettering of the monastery at Montserrat."

"I'm sorry, I didn't get the time," Hap said loudly enough to be heard by people passing by.

"Eleven twenty-three, señor," the concierge matched his own watch to Hap's and at the same time palmed the hundred-euro bill.

"Eleven twenty-three," Hap smiled. "Gracias."

"Eleven twenty-four now, señor."

"Gracias," Hap said again. "Muchas gracias."

"Photographer? Montserrat?" Hap said to himself as he came through the Regente Majestic's front door. A half-beat later his cell phone rang. He picked it from his belt and clicked on. "Daniels."

"Where the damn hell are you?" It was Jake Lowe and he left no chance for reply. "We need you at the hotel right away!"

"What is it?"

"Now, Hap! Right now!"

• THE HOTEL GRAND PALACE, 11:45 A.M.

Jake Lowe, National Security Adviser Marshall, and Hap Daniels stood alone in the special communications room of the four-room suite Lowe and Marshall had taken as their Barcelona crisis headquarters. The door was closed and they were gathered in front of a video monitor waiting for a secure feed to come through from the White House communications center in Washington.

"Go ahead," Lowe said into a headset connected to a secure phone on the table beside him. There was a short pause; then static showed up on the screen followed immediately by the beginning of a thirty-second video clip. A clip that upon their approval would be sent to Fox News for immediate distribution to major television and cable networks worldwide. The video was complete with a time and date stamp that began at 2:23 P.M. yesterday, Friday, April 7. It showed President Harris, alive and well at the "undisclosed location" he had been taken to following the terrorist threat in Madrid. He was seen in a rustic conference room with National Security Adviser Marshall, Secretary of Defense Terrence Langdon and Secretary of State David Chaplin. They were all in shirtsleeves, notepads and bottled water in front of them, diligently going over what was reported to be notes and text for the speech the president would give to NATO leaders Monday in Warsaw.

It wasn't old recycled video from another place and time; it was all new, and in a setting Hap had never seen before.

"How the hell did you do that?" he said as the screen went blank at the finish and he looked at Marshall. "You're here. Langdon's in Brussels, Chaplin's in London," his eyes went to Lowe, "and Crop Duster's someplace… else."

"I asked for your opinion," Lowe said coldly. "Is the video credible from a Secret Service point of view? From the point of view of any global security professional who might see it?"

"Somebody breaks it down technically, I don't know. But from where I stand, yeah, it works," Hap said evenly. "There's just enough, and so far no one should have a reason to scrutinize it closer or believe it's anything but what it's supposed to be."

"So far?" Marshall said quietly. "What do you mean by 'so far'?"

"If POTUS suddenly shows up somewhere on his own, then what? How do we explain that?"

Lowe stared at him in icy silence, and Daniels could feel his rage, his pent-up anger at the whole thing. Abruptly Lowe turned away and spoke into his headset. "Release the video," he said, "release it now."

• 11:55 A.M.

Demi put out a hand to steady herself as the white Monasterio Benedictino Montserrat van made a sharp turn up the long, winding mountain road leading to the monastery. High above her and in the distance she could see the structure itself. It looked like a medieval fortress in miniature, a tiny city built into the cliffs.

Now she shifted her gaze and looked back inside the van. Raphael, the driver, was intent on the road and a large tour bus directly in front of them. Behind him, Beck and Luciana were silent, intent on something they were reading.

Demi looked at Luciana more closely. She was dressed in black and had a large black purse on the seat beside her. It was essentially the same thing she'd worn yesterday when Demi first met her. It made her wonder if it was a uniform of sorts, a classic costume for a classic witch, if there was such a thing.

Demi had told Marten and the president she had no idea who Luciana was. It was a lie. Luciana had been the center of her attention for years and was the wellspring of everything. For the last two decades she had been the sacerdotessa, the high priestess of the secret Aldebaran boschetto, the coven. As such she had mastered the intricate skills of her craft, most specifically those of ritual and psychic influence, and it meant she had authority over all of the coven's followers and that included Reverend Beck and Merriman Foxx.

A widow with piercing green eyes and striking black hair and still remarkably handsome at sixty-six, Luciana owned Pensione Madonnella, a small hotel on the Italian island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples where she had been born. Further research-in the form of a hired private investigator-had established that she left the island two or three times a year for ten days or so at a time to visit small towns and villages in north and central Italy where she would meet with others of the coven, men and women alike, who carried the tattoo of Aldebaran on their left thumb. Immediately afterward she returned to Ischia to oversee her business.

Then, and always at this same time of year, she came to the monastery at Montserrat, where she would check into the Hotel Abat Cisneros and spend the greater part of a week. What she did there or even if it involved the boschetto, Demi had not been able to discover. But whatever it was, it apparently involved Reverend Beck and probably had for some time, because for the last dozen years he had taken his vacation and gone to Europe during the same period. Yet it had not been until yesterday when Demi came to Beck's suite at the Regente Majestic and found the sacerdotessa seated on a couch and having coffee with him that she put Beck's excursions to Europe together with Luciana's sojourns to Montserrat. In retrospect it was a moment of revelation she might well have been prepared for, but she wasn't and finding Luciana there, introduced by Beck as his "good friend," nearly took her breath away.