"I don't believe they would leave their entire operation to one man to execute," the president said calmly, as if Marten had never made his plea. "Not something on the scale they're working on. I don't think Foxx would permit it either."

Immediately he turned and walked past the bubble tables toward the cages at the far end of the room. "If this place served as his main headquarters, there's every chance his records are stored somewhere here, probably all digitalized and on computer files. We find those and we might have some kind of answer."

"Damn it, Cousin," Marten was getting angry. "You're doing it again. Whether you want to believe it or not, your 'rescuers' are coming. And when they get here, one way or another, they'll kill you."

"Mr. Marten. Cousin," President Harris spoke quietly and without emotion. "I appreciate what you are trying to do and what you've done already. But there may well be something here of immeasurable importance, and I can't chance not finding it. If you want to leave, I understand. It's quite alright."

"If I want to leave?" Marten's impatience boiled over. "I'm trying to protect the life of the president of the United States. That's you, if you haven't forgotten."

"Understand something, Cousin. This president has no intention of leaving until he has done anything and everything he can to find an answer to what these people have planned."

Marten stared at him. Yes, they might find something that would reveal Foxx's plan somewhere in this cavernous underground but it was far more likely they wouldn't. Just finding a starting place could take hours, even days, and they didn't have minutes. On the other hand, he knew they at least had to try.

Marten took a breath. "Whatever files Foxx might have in this place," he said with resignation, "he wouldn't have left them lying around in his outer office."

"True," Harris smiled inwardly. Marten, he was extremely relieved to know, was back in the fold. "And there were only experiments and work tables in the first lab and in this one."

"So there have to be areas here we haven't seen." Marten put Foxx's electronic device in his pocket, then went to Foxx's body, turned it over, and slid the security card Foxx had used to get them into the chambers from his jacket pocket. He held it up to Harris, "I doubt he had the chance to shut everything down."

• 2:35 P.M.

Hap Daniels eased the rental Audi into the monastery's parking area, one jammed with cars and tour buses. In front and above him he could see the stone edifices that comprised the mini-city itself. He continued on, slowly, intensely, the thing most immediate on his mind was a place to park the car.

Under other circumstances he would have gone directly to security, identified himself, and requested their help. Parking would have been an afterthought. It wasn't now. He could tell no one who he was or why he was there. At the same time he needed to find a place to leave the Audi where it wouldn't be towed and where he had immediate access to it if he had to bring the president to it on the run. As a result all he could do was drive up and down through the parking area until he either found an open space or someone pulling out, the same as anyone else.

He made a turn and was starting down the same row he had just passed when his cell phone rang. Immediately he clicked on, "Daniels."

"It's Bill, Hap," the voice of Bill Strait crackled through the tiny speaker.

"What is it?"

"Crop Duster's been located."

"What?" Daniels's heart jumped in his throat.

"He's been placed at a monastery called Montserrat in the mountains outside Barcelona. Two CIA recovery teams are on the way now by helo to bring him in. Wheels down at the monastery at 1515."

"Bill," Hap pressed him, "who gave you this information? Where did it come from?"

"Chief of staff in Madrid."

"How the hell did he find out?"

"I don't know."

"Who ordered in the CIA?"

"Specifically?"

"Yes."

"I don't know either. It all came from the embassy in Madrid."

"It should have been run through us first."

"I know, but it wasn't."

"Two teams isn't much."

"More are on the way from Madrid."

"Any word on Crop Duster's condition?"

"None."

Suddenly Daniels saw a green Toyota start to back out of a parking space a half dozen spaces in front of him. He touched the accelerator and the Audi shot ahead. Then he stopped short, blocking the road behind him, waiting for the Toyota to fully clear the space.

"Hap, we've got our own helo on the way. We need you here now. Wheels up for Montserrat at 15:20."

"Ten-four, Bill, thanks," Hap clicked off. "CIA?" he said out loud. And only two teams? Just what CIA were they? Regular ops or some special branch under the wing of the secretary of defense and the others? How far and wide did this thing go? And where did Bill Strait fit in it? Whose side was he on? And how was he going to tell Bill he couldn't make the helo to Montserrat because he was already there?

Just then the Toyota cleared the parking space and drove off. Daniels hit the Audi's accelerator and started to swing into the vacated spot. In the same instant a motorcycle with a sidecar cut in front of him, its rider claiming the space. Hap slammed on the brakes. "Hey! That's my space!" he yelled out the open window.

"First come, first served," the rider said brusquely, and climbed off the machine.

"I was here first!"

The rider ignored him and instead hurriedly took off his helmet and locked it in the motorcycle's storage compartment.

"Get that thing the hell out of there!" Hap shoved the car door open and stepped out.

The rider walked off and in seconds disappeared into the crowd leading to the plaza in front of the basilica.

Hap glared after him, his patience and very nearly his sanity all but gone. "I'll get you, you bastard," he breathed. "One day I'll find you and get you good!"

• 2:50 P.M.

It was all colors and images, as if floating through a dream.

Demi remembered only pieces of it.

"We have things to do," the Reverend Beck had said barely seconds after Nicholas Marten left the private room at the restaurant Abat Cisneros to find the president. In no time Demi had collected her cameras and small equipment bag and followed Beck and Luciana out the door. Seconds later they were crossing the plaza in front of the basilica and walking toward the funicular railway that climbed into the mountains above the monastery to the ancient hermitage of Saint Joan.

It was there as they entered the funicular's green car she began to feel a kind of euphoria she had never before experienced. At almost the same time the colors started to come and the reality around her-Reverend Beck, Luciana, the monastery, the funicular itself and the tourists crowding inside it-began to fade. Something in the coffee maybe. It was a fleeting thought that dissolved into a soothing, near-psychedelic mist of translucent crimson and then turquoise and then sienna. A slow, gentle swirling midnight blue tinged with yellow followed.

Hand in hand was the vague memory of walking past the ruins of an ancient church and seeing a small silver-colored SUV parked at the side of a narrow mountain road. A handsome young driver stood by as Reverend Beck helped her into the back seat. After that came the sense of the SUV moving off and then accelerating over the uneven road. Beck seemed to be in the seat beside her, with Luciana riding in front beside the young driver.

Soon they were traveling across a long rocky plateau and then the SUV forded a rushing mountain stream and climbed through an area of conifers; and then they were dropping down into a small valley filled with spring grasses and where a thin layer of fog was beginning to settle. Not long afterward they passed under a high stone arch and then shortly came upon the ruins of still another ancient church, this one near the base of a towering rock formation. It was here they stopped and got out and Beck led them up a steep winding path.