"Stop! Stop it!" President Harris let go of Foxx and grabbed Marten, pulling him away. "Enough! Dammit! Enough!"

Marten stumbled back to stare at him wide-eyed. The prize fighter shoved into his corner, chest heaving, eyes locked on his beaten and pummeled quarry, confused, wondering why the fight had been stopped.

Abruptly Harris moved in, blocking Marten's view of Foxx and getting right in his face. "You're letting what he did to Caroline Parsons run away with you. I don't blame you, but right now your own private feelings are something none of us can afford."

Marten didn't react.

The president stayed in his face, nose to nose. "You're killing him. Do you understand me? If you haven't already."

Slowly Marten regained his composure. "Sorry," he said finally. "I'm sorry."

The president stayed where he was for a moment longer, then turned to Foxx. His head was at an angle. His eyes still turned up under their lids. Mucus and spent mineral water ran from his nose and onto the table. He snorted, trying to get air and at the same time get rid of whatever liquid still remained in his nasal passages.

Immediately Harris bent over him and pulled the napkin from his mouth. There was a resounding gasp as Foxx's lungs filled with air.

"Can you hear me, doctor?" the president said.

There was no reply.

"Doctor Foxx, can you hear me?"

For a long moment nothing happened, and then came a vague nod of the head. The president eased him over, and Foxx's eyes came down from under their lids to stare at Harris.

"Do you recognize me?"

Foxx nodded almost imperceptibly.

"Can you breathe?"

Again the nod. Stronger this time. So was his breathing.

"I want to know what you are planning for the Middle East. When it is to happen, exactly where, and who else is involved. If you won't tell me we will repeat the procedure."

Foxx didn't respond, just lay there staring at the president. Then ever so slowly, his eyes went to Marten and held there.

"What are you planning for the Middle East?" the president repeated. "When is it to happen? Exactly where? Who else is involved?"

Foxx lay silent and motionless, staring at Marten. Then his eyes came back to Harris and his lips moved. "Alright," he breathed, "I will tell you."

The president and Marten exchanged hugely emotional glances. Finally. After everything. They were going to have an answer.

"Tell me all of it, every detail," the president demanded. "What are you planning for the Middle East?"

"Death," Foxx said with no emotion whatsoever.

Then, with a sharp glance at Marten, he bit down hard, grinding his teeth together.

"Grab him!" Marten yelled, moving toward Foxx. "Grab him! Open his mouth!"

Marten shoved a stunned President Harris aside, then took hold of Foxx's jaws and tried to pry them open. It was too late. Whatever it was worked extremely fast. Merriman Foxx was already dead.

• 2:25 P.M.

Hap Daniels flung a rented dark maroon Audi around a tour bus and accelerated up the steep road leading to the Benedictine monastery at Montserrat. When he got there it would be needle-in-the-haystack time, fighting through a mass of tourists looking for a balding, toupeeless John Henry Harris and Nicholas Marten, whom he had seen in person only once and then very briefly.

At the same time he would be trying to find an attractive young French photographer called Demi Picard who, as the concierge at the Regente Majestic had said, had short dark hair, wore a navy blazer and tan slacks, and was most likely in the company of a middle-aged African-American male and an older European woman. Add to that the fact that he was following a raft of information he thought was correct but had no way of knowing for certain and going to a place he'd never been. Never mind that he was traveling on little more than coffee, adrenaline, and twenty minutes' sleep.

He passed another tour bus, then several cars, then squealed around a sharp turn. As he did he glanced up at the cliffs above him and got a momentary glimpse of the monastery and the mountainside into which it was built. How many more turns there were in the road or how much longer it would take to get there he had no way to know.

He had come this far because of the story he'd told his deputy, Bill Strait: that Assistant Secret Service Director Ted Langway, still in Madrid and working out of the U.S. embassy there, "has been on my ass all morning asking for a detailed briefing. [Which was true.] He just called again [which wasn't], so I don't have any damn choice but to talk to him. I'm going to check into the hotel, deal with him, then take a shower and a real nap, a couple of hours anyway. Call my cell if you need me."

With that he'd put Strait officially in charge, made certain things were coordinated between his Secret Service detail and the vice president's for the vice president's 13:00 arrival at Barcelona Airport, then gone to the Hotel Colon, where the Secret Service had reserved a number of rooms. Once in his room, he'd taken a quick shower, changed his clothes, then armed himself and left by a side door. Fifteen minutes later he drove the maroon Audi rental fast out of Barcelona, headed for the monastery at Montserrat. By then it was seven minutes past one in the afternoon. Seven minutes since the vice president of the United States, Hamilton Rogers, had touched down on Barcelona soil.

• 2:28 P.M.

"Suicide pill. Poison capsule buried in his right rear upper molar," Marten turned from Merriman Foxx's body to look at the president. "All he had to do was give it one good crunch to activate it, and he did. I worried he might do something like this earlier but I never thought he would have it as a permanent implant."

"If there was ever any doubt of how committed these people are, there's none now," the president said grimly. "It's what it must have been like in the Nazi camp in World War Two. Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, and the rest hammering ahead with their genocidal crusade, all the while they have Dr. Mengele doing his horrible experiments at the extermination camps. Who knows what would have happened if he ever began to use them on a massive scale?"

"The difference now is that our Dr. Mengele is dead."

"His plan isn't dead. Neither is theirs," Harris snapped. "And we didn't learn a damn thing about it. Nothing." Abruptly he looked off, to just stand there detached and silent. Clearly he was thinking about what to do next.

Marten watched him. He'd been too rough on Foxx and he knew it. The president was right. It had all been emotion. About Caroline, about everything she had meant to him for so much of his life, every piece of it compounded by his rage over her murder. On the other hand it was clear the South African had long been prepared to take his own life if he had to. He was a professional in the field of human pain and might well have been aware of his own physical threshold, of how much he could stand without breaking, and that had been both the reason and the motivation for the implant; it was not the fear of death but the fear of giving up information that would harm the cause. It made the president's remark about the commitment of these people all the more terrifying. These weren't a handful of zealots; they were part of a highly organized, well-funded, hugely dangerous movement.

"Mr. President," Marten said abruptly. "I think we can safely assume that at some point Foxx confirmed your presence here to your Washington friends." He walked over and picked up the BlackBerry-like device Foxx had taken from his pocket and then dropped when Marten grabbed him. "I would bet he was trying to contact them when I got him. They don't hear from him and soon, they're coming fast and right here. It's what I said earlier. We need to call Miguel and get the hell out. Go back to the tourist area and hide somewhere until he comes."