After that Demi found nothing. Even among the most committed academics further knowledge of the Aradia coven that used the sign of Aldebaran seemed nonexistent. Internet searches turned up nothing. Museum queries and phone interviews with practicing witches and witchcraft historians around the world ended the same way.

Then, nearly a year later, and now working for Agence France-Presse, she learned of a reclusive scholar named Giacomo Gela. A bald, emaciated octogenarian and former soldier who had lost both arms in the Second World War, Gela lived in a tiny room in a small village near Pisa and had made the study of Italian witchcraft his life's work. Contacting him, she heard the pause in his voice when she mentioned Aradia. When she asked if she might visit and told him of the reason behind her request, he agreed to see her immediately.

In Gela she found a man of immense intellect who not only knew about the enigmatic Aradia but about a more secretive order hidden within it. Called Aradia Minor, it was referred to in writing simply as the letter A followed by the letter M but written in a combination of Hebrew and Greek alphabets as " μ" which made it look more like a vague and innocuous symbol that would be of little more than passing interest to almost anyone. Even to Gela, the true origin of Aradia Minor remained a mystery. What he did know was that for most of the latter half of the sixteenth century it had been centered on the Italian island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples, the birthplace and home, Demi would later discover, of Luciana. In the early seventeenth century, and probably in the interests of security, Aradia Minor was decentralized and moved back to the mainland, its boschetti scattered clandestinely throughout countryside, largely in the region between Rome and Florence.

Aradia Minor's caution was not without reason, for among its traditions were annual rites that celebrated ancient and often brutal pagan ceremonies that involved blood oaths, sacrifices of living creatures, and human torture, and were performed before several hundred members of a powerful order called the Unknowns. What the purpose of these ceremonies was or who this group of unknowns was remained a mystery. What was acknowledged was that the celebration of these rites began in the late 1530s; that they were held at various temples secreted throughout Europe; and that they were performed annually and for years at a time throughout the centuries, only to go suddenly and inexplicably dormant, sometimes for decades or more, before beginning once again.

Chillingly, Giacomo Gela believed this was one of Aradia Minor's active periods; its identifying marker, the sign of Aldebaran; its singular traditions still practiced. Where it was centered, or why it existed, or for what reason, remained as unclear now as it had in the past, yet he was certain there had to be a strong rationale behind it, one that was highly focused and required not just great secrecy but considerable funding because too many people were involved and the pageant was too regular, too guarded, and too extreme for the expense not be substantial.

It was then Gela's eyes had narrowed and his voice had become shrill with warning: "Do not take anything you have learned here further than the walls of this room."

The expense was not Aradia Minor's alone, he told her; history was littered with the corpses of those who had tried to know more. To make certain she fully understood, he bared a secret few people still living knew-that while it was true he had lost his arms in the Second World War, the butchering had not come in battle; instead it had happened when he had inadvertently come upon one of Aradia Minor's ceremonies in an alpine forest deep in the Italian Dolomites where he was on patrol. That he was alive today was only because those who cut off his arms purposely failed to finish him off.

"To kill me would have been easy. Instead they bound my wounds and carried me from the woods and left me by the roadside. The reason, I now know, was to leave behind a hideous living reminder, a warning for anyone else who might try to find out what happened and attempt to uncover the secrets of Aradia Minor."

Abruptly his eyes had locked on hers and his voice had suddenly raged with fury: "How many hours of how many days of how many years have I sworn at God, damning him, wishing they had finished me. The life I have lived like this, and for as long as I have, has been far crueler than death could ever be."

The way Gela spoke, the sound of his voice, the rage in his eyes, the way he sat there armless and cross-legged in his tiny room, was horrifying. In combination with her father's letter it might well have been enough then for her to abandon her journey altogether. But she hadn't; instead she had deliberately pushed it to the back of her memory, locked it away, and kept it there.

Until now. Waiting here, alone, in this room, in this corner of the monastery, he suddenly broke free of her memory. She saw his face in front of her. Again heard his sharp warning. Do not take anything you have learned here further than the walls of this room.

A sound near the back of the room made the vision fade and Demi looked up. The door had just been opened and Reverend Beck and Luciana were coming toward her. A third person she couldn't see clearly was with them. Then as they neared, she did.

"Welcome, Demi, I'm pleased you could join us," he said warmly. His face, his shock of white hair, his hands with their extraordinarily long fingers, unmistakable.

Merriman Foxx.

• 12:44 P.M.

The green-and-yellow cable car reached the upper terminal and stopped. A moment later an attendant opened the doors and the passengers began to file out. Marten glanced at the president, then followed an Italian couple out of the car and up the walkway toward the monastery.

Forty seconds later he reached the top of the walkway and stopped. The monastery complex was directly across from him. The buildings he could see all seemed to be constructed of the same beige-colored sand or limestone. The edifice closest to him and on the far side of a paved roadway was seven stories high. One nearby was eight. Another near it was ten and had a huge kind of bell-tower on top. And these were only a part of the whole. The main attraction, the basilica, was across a wide plaza and up a broad stone staircase, both of which were filled with tourists.

• 12:50 P.M.

Marten walked leisurely across the plaza, making it relatively easy for Beck to find him. As he went, a man passed him from behind and kept on walking. President Harris.

• 12:52 P.M.

Marten kept walking. Ahead of him he saw the president veer left, pass a tour group, then disappear beyond them, following Miguel's directions, going toward the Hotel Abat Cisneros and the restaurant that was part of it.

Marten slowed his pace and looked around, playing the first-time visitor trying to get his bearings and decide where to go next. He wondered whether Demi had lied to them. That neither she nor Beck nor Luciana nor Merriman Foxx, for that matter, was anywhere near here. That she had sent them miles out of the way while she and the others met Foxx somewhere else entirely, maybe even in Barcelona itself.

"Mr. Marten," the deep, velvety voice of Reverend Rufus Beck suddenly called out. Marten looked up to see the congressional chaplain alone, walking toward him across the plaza from the direction of the basilica.

"Mr. Marten," Beck said again as he reached him. "How nice to see you. Ms. Picard told me you might be coming."

"She did?" Marten tried to sound surprised.