• 4:50 P.M.

Matches.

The matches the president still carried from the diversionary fire he'd started in the Barcelona train station to escape the Spanish police. By Marten's count there were eleven left. Seven had already been used to get them this far in the pitch black of the tunnel, wherever "this far" was and whatever tunnel this was. He could hear the president breathing and knew he was resting somewhere close by. "You okay?" he asked in the darkness.

"Yes. You?" the president's voice came back.

"So far."

They had left Foxx's hideous lab at 3:09, escaping the rush of gas pouring from the jets built into the room and going back up the tunnel the way they'd come in. The trouble was the door at the far end was locked and there was no other entrance. It meant they had no place to go except the hideous lab from which they'd just escaped. That left only the tunnel they were in and gave them nothing to do but wait until the gas escaped Foxx's chamber and the shaft filled with it. It was in that moment of terrible realization they felt the slightest waft of fresh air. They followed it twenty feet or so and found a slender opening in the tunnel wall just wide enough for a man to slip through. On the far side was a narrow sandstone passage that dropped swiftly away and then quickly became little more than a crawl space. Marten lit one more match and they could see it continue on for another thirty feet before it turned and disappeared from sight. Where it went or if it simply ended there was no way to know. But it was filled with fresh air and they didn't dare go back to the main tunnel, so they took it. Marten first, wriggling through with his feet and elbows, the president right behind doing the same.

At the end of the thirty feet the shaft turned sharply and they had to inch around it. They continued that way in pitch black for another hundred feet and then the narrowness and tight press of the passage suddenly gave way to a larger chamber and they were able to stand upright. Another match and they could see they were in what appeared to be an old mining tunnel with a rusted narrow-gauge ore-car track running down its center. Apparently they had entered somewhere midtunnel so to know which direction to go was nothing more than a guess, which they did, turning right and moving off in the dark, using the rails as a guide. By Marten's watch it was then 3:24.

Seven minutes later, at 3:31, the tunnel veered left and they followed it. At 3:37 exactly a thundering explosion rocked the entire mountain. The tunnel ceiling fifty feet behind them collapsed and in seconds the entire shaft filled with a rolling cloud of choking dust.

Immediately they dropped to the floor, hugging it, fearful even to breathe. Then, hands clamped over noses, coughing and spitting and still following the ore-car rails, they crawled off in the only direction they could go.

By 3:50 most of the dust had settled and they got to their feet and moved on, one following the other, the one behind holding the belt of the man in front so as not to get separated in the inky darkness, ready to pull him back in the event the ground suddenly disappeared beneath his feet.

At 4:32 they heard the sound of dripping water and stopped. Another match showed the tunnel continuing on around a bend and at the same time revealed a small pool of collected groundwater where the tunnel wall touched the floor. Water to drink and to wash the dust from the face and eyes.

"You first, Cousin," the president coughed.

Marten grinned, "Sure, get the peasant to test for poison before the king tries it."

Marten saw the president smile just as the match went out. The moment was fleeting but in the awful black that followed it was a moment of humor shared. Not much but something.

Afterward they drank and washed out the dust and then sat down to rest.

• 5:10 P.M.

Hap Daniels sat on the edge of the bed watching the young doctor finish bandaging his shoulder. They were in the cramped upstairs bedroom of a small house near the Llobregat River and on the outskirts of El Borràs, a town in a valley north and east of Montserrat, that belonged to Pau Savall, Miguel's uncle. A stonemason and house-painter, it was Pau who had lent Miguel the motorcycle and behind whose home the Limousines Barcelona Mercedes was now hidden.

A final layer of bandage and the doctor was done. Standing, he looked at Hap through rimless glasses.

"Usted ha tenido mucha suerte," he said quietly. "Las dos heridas son leves, del tejido blando. Tendrá que descansar esta noche, pero mañana podrá irse."

"He says you are very lucky," Miguel said from where he stood at the foot of the bed. "You have taken two wounds. Both are in the soft tissue. The bullets went all the way through. You will be quite sore and stiff but alright. He wants you to rest for tonight, tomorrow you may go."

"You have much luck, mi amigo," the doctor said in a halting mixture of English and Spanish. "God only knows the reason for it. That is why you have un amigo like this," he nodded toward Miguel, "he is God's helper. Now, if you will permit me, my children await me at supper." With that he said something in Spanish to Miguel and the two started across the room.

Hap saw them stop briefly at the door and the doctor handed Miguel something, and then they both left.

• 5:20 P.M.

Hap took a breath and ran a hand over his bandaged shoulder, remembering the painful ride down from the monastery in the cramped sidecar of Miguel's motorcycle. It had seemed to take a lifetime but in truth had been little more than twenty minutes. Twenty minutes after that the doctor had come.

By that time he'd had a couple of solid hits of local brandy, learned who Miguel was, who the men he had called his "cousins" were, and that the reason Miguel had helped him was because he had identified himself as a Secret Service agent and risked his life to save the man he thought was the president. He learned too that Miguel was the limousine driver who had brought the president and Marten to Montserrat from Barcelona and how he had come to have the keypad combination that allowed him to enter Foxx's office.

Miguel had gone to the monastery's restaurant to find his "cousins." The headwaiter had seen them leave with Merriman Foxx and gave him directions to Foxx's office. He'd been almost to the door when the ops had come and he'd quickly stepped back into the nearby shadows. When Broad Nose used the keypad, he'd watched carefully. The numbers were 4-4-4-2. Remembering numbers came easily to him, the result of too many days playing the national lottery, of too much money spent, of too many numbers remembered out of sheer hope.

It was then Hap had learned it was Foxx who had been the slumped white-haired figure the ops had carried out. He'd known him only by reputation and because of the secret subcommittee hearings on terrorism. He'd never seen him or even seen a photograph of him until that moment when Miguel charged the ops thinking they had the president, and the jacket came off, exposing him.

Why the president had enough interest in Foxx to risk coming all the way to Montserrat he had no idea until Miguel confirmed some of what he already suspected; that the president's Washington "friends" had planned an action the president refused to take part in-a mass genocide against the Muslim states-and that Merriman Foxx was the prime engineer of it. The president had no details of the plan and that was the reason he and Marten had gone to the monastary: to force Foxx to reveal the plan's particulars in an effort to stop it. Whether they had been successful or not, there was no way to know.

• 5:35 P.M.

Miguel came back into the room carrying a glass of water and a small envelope. "Take these," he handed Hap the water and slid two white pills from the envelope. "For pain. The doctor gave them to me. There are more in here." He set the envelope on the bedside table.