But this was not "other circumstances." He was the last man between the president and his life or death. He would have only one move and that would come in the final seconds, when he stepped from the crowd, held up his Secret Service credentials and yelled who he was, telling the ops forcefully there was just-received information of an imminent threat to their operation and that he was relieving them of their mission. Then he would take POTUS into custody and head for the Audi. All the while hoping to hell the president would read the play as fast as it happened, trust him, and order the ops aside. Surprise, timing, execution, and sheer luck would be everything. The margin for error was zero.

The sudden chirp of his cell phone broke his train of thought. He picked it off his belt and looked at the originating number. It was Bill Strait. It meant the Secret Service helo in Barcelona was readying for a wheels-up to Montserrat, and Strait was wondering where the hell he was.

Suddenly it occurred to him that Strait had told him the CIA helo would have wheels down at Monsterrat at 1515, while the Secret Service helo wouldn't be ready for wheels-up in Barcelona for the trip to Montserrat until 1520. He hadn't thought about it at the time but why that long a delay? Did someone want to make certain the CIA got to the monastery before the Secret Service did? If so, who had arranged it? Someone at the embassy in Madrid or Bill Strait?

"Roger, Bill," Hap said as he clicked on.

"Where the hell are you?"

"Why did it take us so long to get the helo ready?"

"They were out at Barcelona Airport refueling. They'd just touched down when I alerted them. Why?"

"You alerted them, not the chief of staff?"

"Yes, me. Hap, for chrissake we're ready to go. Where are you?"

"Go without me."

"What?"

"I'm tied up on something else. I'll check in later. Go without me. That's an order."

With that Hap clicked off. "Damn it," he breathed. Was the refueling just bad timing or something else? Could he trust his deputy or couldn't he?

• 3:15 P.M.

A thundering, thudding roar was followed by a storm of flying dust and debris as the helicopter touched down on the helipad exactly on schedule. Immediately the pilot cut the engines, the doors opened and four men in dark glasses and wearing suit coats climbed out. They ducked the still-churning rotor blades and moved off fast toward the steps leading to the basilica.

"Here we go," Hap Daniels said to himself, "here we go."

• 3:22 P.M.

The ops moved quickly through the crowd in front of the basilica, then, like a wave, turned down a walkway and disappeared from sight.

Hap dodged around a group of schoolchildren walking in line toward the basilica, trying to keep up. A moment later he was on the walkway the ops had taken. Tourists were everywhere. He swore under his breath and kept moving, his eyes searching the walkway ahead, afraid he had lingered too far behind. Ten paces more and saw them turn down another walkway. He pushed around two chattering women and followed, his eyes on the apparent leader. He was thirty at most and very fit with dark, short-cropped hair and a particularly broad nose that looked as if it had been broken more than once. Just then they reached a convergence of walkways and Broad Nose stopped to get his bearings. In seconds he'd made a decision and led the ops down another walkway, one with red and white votive candles lining its far wall.

Hap stayed back as much as he dared, following as they took another turn and then another, then disappeared around a corner. Eight seconds later he rounded the same corner and pulled up. They had stopped at a heavy wooden door set into a stone archway. Broad Nose slid open a wood panel next to it, revealing an electronic keypad. Hap saw him punch in four numbers, then slide the panel closed and turn the iron knob on the door. It opened and they entered quickly, shutting the door behind them.

• 3:26 P.M.

Where they were going inside, or how long it would take them to find the president, Hap couldn't know. He wished to hell he had Bill Strait and the rest of his Secret Service team there; wished too that he could have contacted one of the CIA supervisors so he could know just who these ops were. Even then he would have been unsure if he could trust either of them. It was a situation he hated but there it was. Suddenly it occurred to him that the ops might bring the president out another exit, one somewhere else in the complex. It made him think that his best plan would be to go back and position himself near the helipad, make his move as they rushed the president toward the helicopter.

He was turning, starting to head back, when he saw a familiar figure suddenly step from the shadows on the far side of the walkway and go up to the door. He stopped abruptly and watched the man slide the panel open and punch four numbers into the keypad as if he knew the code perfectly. Immediately afterward he slid the panel closed and reached for the doorknob.

"What the hell?" Hap breathed. The man was the motorcycle rider. Clearly he wasn't an op or anything like it, more like a messenger sent to pick something up. If the ops did bring the president out this way and at the same time his motorcycle man went in, anything could happen, and the president would be directly in harm's way.

Hap moved just as the man pushed the door open. A heartbeat later he shoved a 9mm Sig Sauer automatic pistol behind the man's ear.

"Freeze, right there!"

A gasp went out of him and he stopped right where he was. In a split second Hap pulled him from the doorway and shoved him back into the shadows where he'd been hiding.

"Who the hell are you?" Miguel Balius stared him in the eye.

• 3:32 P.M.

It's not who I am," Hap breathed, "it's who you are, where the hell you were going."

"I'm supposed to meet my cousins," Miguel said carefully, all too aware that this was the man whose parking space he had stolen.

"Cousins?"

"Take it easy. It was only a parking space."

"What's in there?" Hap nodded toward the door to Foxx's office.

"I don't know."

"You're going inside to meet your cousins but you don't know what's there."

"I've never been here before."

"No?"

"No," Miguel held his ground.

Hap glanced back at the open door. So far nothing had happened, at least from what he could tell from there. He looked back to Miguel. "I've never been here before either. Let's find out what's there together."

• 3:34 P.M.

They came through the door slowly and into dim light. Miguel first as a shield, with Hap's Sig Sauer tight against his ear. There was one large room with tall chairs along one wall, a massive bookcase against the other, and a large wooden desk at the end of it. Just beyond it, and to the right, a closed ornate wooden door was set into an arched nave. That was all, no ops, no sign of them, only silence.

"Where does that door go?"

"I told you before, I don't know."

"Suppose we find out," Hap started him down the room toward the door.

"Who are you?" Miguel asked carefully as they went. Clearly the issue was not about the parking space, that had been a coincidence. This man was a professional, an American. But who was he working for? Foxx? The four men he had seen enter? Or was he one of the pursuers the "cousins" were avoiding? Or was he doing something else entirely?

Hap didn't answer, instead he pulled his eyes from the door they were approaching to glance behind them. It was an instant Miguel might have used to throw him to the floor and run. But he hadn't come here to run away, even under this circumstance. He was here for his "cousins." He'd been waiting at the bottom of the hill for more than three hours without a word from them and anxiety had roiled in his gut. He was certain the reason he hadn't heard was because they were in trouble. It was why he had abandoned the limousine and borrowed the motorcycle from an uncle who lived in the nearby town of El Borràs, then raced it up to the monastery as he had and into the parking space ahead of this American. Why he had gone to the restaurant and learned from the head-waiter that the men he described as his "cousins" had met with Merriman Foxx in the private dining room and that afterward the three had left together, going in the direction of the office Foxx was known to keep there. He was in that office now because of his "cousins." Whoever this man here was, gun or no gun, he would be damned if he was going to let him harm either of them.