Moments later they passed beneath a towering rock formation and walked across a natural stone bridge with chasms on either side that fell away sharply hundreds of feet below. The far side was in deep shadow, and as they reached it she saw the entrance to a large cave with several monks in dark hooded robes standing watch on either side of it.

"La iglesia dentro de la montaña," Beck said as they entered. "The church within the mountain."

Inside, the cavern rose to an enormous height and was lighted by the flickering glow of what seemed a thousand votive candles. Here, more of the robed and hooded monks kept watch. Then they entered a second chamber. Like the first it was aglow with candlelight. Only here stalactites and stalagmites hung from the ceiling and rose up from the floor in spectacular combinations.

They were partway across this second chamber when she saw the church. It was a place that, in the state of euphoria she still experienced, seemed to be the sanctuary she had been expecting. Entering, she saw a series of stone arches rising far above the nave to form the ceiling, while beneath it two wooden galleries, one on either side and mounted on massive timbers, sat a dozen feet above huge hand-hewn paving stones that made up the floor. Directly ahead, at the nave's far end, was an ornate gilded altar.

Demi turned to look at Beck, as if to question him about it, when she saw a young woman in a white ankle-length dress coming toward them. She had striking brown eyes and a luxurious mane of black hair that fell to her waist. Quite possibly, she was the most beautiful creature Demi had ever seen.

"Demi," the woman smiled broadly as she neared, "I'm so pleased you came."

Demi stopped short. Who was this woman who seemed to know her? Suddenly she seemed strikingly familiar. But how did she know her? And from where or when? Then she realized: Cristina. The young woman who had been with them at the Café Tripoli in Malta.

"You must be tired from your journey," Cristina said warmly. "Please let me take you to your room so that you can rest."

"I-" Demi hesitated.

"Go with her, Demi," Reverend Beck smiled reassuringly, "you wanted to know about the coven of Aldebaran. This is a part of it. Tonight you will see more. And tomorrow, more than that. Everything you wanted to know, you will find out. Everything."

Demi studied him-his smile, his manner of being-as he stood there. At almost the same moment the feeling of euphoria faded, as if whatever drug she had ingested earlier had abruptly worn off. Suddenly she remembered her cameras and the equipment bag she had had with her earlier. "My things," she said to Beck.

"You mean these," Luciana came up from behind. One of the hooded monks accompanied her and carried Demi's cameras and equipment bag. Bowing gently, he handed them to her.

"Thank you," she said, still shaken by the uncomfortable memory of her drugged journey there.

"Please," Cristina took her by the arm and together they crossed the nave toward an area Demi had not yet seen. As they went Demi looked down at the large paving stones beneath their feet. Most had been polished to a high sheen by the trample of feet over time. Similarly, most all had names carved into them; family names, she thought. The curious thing was they were not Spanish but Italian.

"They are family tombs," Cristina said quietly. "Beneath this floor are the earthly remains of the honored dead, interred over the centuries."

"Honored dead?"

"Yes."

Again Demi heard her father's warning and in the next instant saw the tortured face of the armless octogenarian scholar Giacomo Gela. At the same time a voice deep inside her whispered that she had opened one door too many, that this was a place to which she should never have come. Abruptly she looked back, as if for a way out.

Luciana was gone and Beck was alone in the center of the room watching her and at the same time talking on a cell phone. Behind him, at the far end of the nave where the church ended and the caves began, four of the hooded monks stood guard. She realized then that they-and those outside by the stone bridge and no doubt others she had yet to see-were the keepers of this place and that in all probability no one ever entered or left without their consent.

"Are you alright, Demi?" Cristina asked gently.

"Yes," she said, "I'm quite alright. Why wouldn't I be?"

• 2:55 P.M.

Marten and the president stared at the horror. Neither man able to speak, barely able to breathe. They had entered Merriman Foxx's most interior laboratory. Come there almost as if the madman had deliberately planned it that way. Were he still alive he might well have had the audacity to show it to them himself. That he was dead mattered little. One way or another, it seemed, he had simply wanted them to see it. Or rather, experience it.

They'd found their way here because there had been nowhere else for them to go. The security card Marten had taken from Foxx's jacket pocket only permitted them to go forward, not back the way they had come. They could enter a room, cave, shaft, or chamber through the sliding burnished steel doors that marked each, but they could not leave by that same door. The security system would not allow it. The only way out was through a similar door at each room's farthest end. A door that, one after another, led only deeper into the core of the mountain and into more of his laboratories.

The first three had been little more than medium-sized, well-lit rooms, either natural caves or carved from the stone itself. Connected by the same dripping tunnels and boardwalks they had passed over at the beginning, each had contained the complex machinery of an advanced biochemist's lab. From the layman's point of view the equipment appeared to be apparatus for continued agriculture study and application. Among them were machines that tested and analyzed water for various contaminants: viruses, bacteria, salts, metals, or things radioactive.

Each chamber was checked carefully and then they moved on. In none had they found so much as a computer, file cabinet, or other kind of information-storage device, primitive or otherwise. What they did find were computer screens with keyboards and mouses that suggested they were all wired into a master unit located elsewhere.

"If I wasn't claustrophobic before I'm getting there now," Marten said as they left the last chamber, then were immediately forced into what was nearly a twenty-foot-long crawl space beneath a huge slab of rock.

"Don't think about it," the president said as they reached the end, then stood upright and started down a rickety boardwalk over a particularly damp section of dimly lit shaft.

The tunnel here went downward at a steep angle and then turned sharply at a right angle and went down farther still. By Marten's guess each section was at least five hundred feet long, which made the combined total the longest distance between chambers by far. Finally they saw another burnished door at the end of it. Reaching it, Marten swiped the card and they entered a narrow entry-way that led to a darkened room beyond. This time he picked up a small piece of wood that had broken off from the boardwalk and slipped it between the door and the wall frame, leaving the smallest opening as the door slid closed behind them. Not much, but something they could pry open if they wanted to, or had to. He hadn't done it before because if they'd chosen to go back it would only have been into the previous shaft or chamber, where the door was already locked. It would have been a retreat to nothing. He'd done it this time because of a sudden and unnerving sense of dread, a feeling that the space they were about to enter was nothing like anything they had seen before, and going back into the tunnel where they'd been would be far better than staying where they were.