Suddenly the door opened and a weary Staughton appeared, putting an abrupt end to Geoffrey Barnes’s musings.

“Sir.”

“Staughton.”

“They’ve disappeared.”

Now we’re going to disappear,” was what Rafael told Sarah, still inside the car.

They continued their visitors’ tour through the British capital a while longer, while the city slowly began to awaken. They were almost out of gas. Rafael asked Sarah to turn left at the intersection with King’s Cross Station and to slow down. Then the double agent moved to the backseat, under Sarah’s close scrutiny.

Jack folded down the backseat to gain access to the trunk, from which he took out a green wooden box. He returned the seat to its normal position, sat up, and rolled down all the windows. Following this, he opened the wooden box, took out the small balls it contained, and began throwing them one by one to one side of the street, and then the other, almost rhythmically. The balls rolled under the automobiles parked at the curb.

“No matter what happens, don’t stop until I tell you.”

The car was already about a hundred yards from Euston Station.

“Now speed up and then stop in front of the station,” Rafael ordered, throwing the last ball.

“What are you doing?” Sarah asked.

“We’re almost there,” he said.

Then, when the car was just outside Euston Station, the unexpected happened.

“Okay, shut off the engine.”

Sarah obeyed, and right away all hell broke loose. A succession of small explosions moved toward them from the King’s Cross intersection, approaching from both sides of Euston Road. A thick cloud of tear gas invaded the street. Shouts could be heard. People who lived in the neighborhood woke up terrified.

Shielded by the gas barrier behind them, Rafael and Sarah ran toward Euston Station.

Without exchanging a word, they ran to the taxi stop on the lower level. From there, everything became much simpler. They asked the taxi driver to take them to the Waterloo Station, where they arrived in time to catch the Eurostar headed for Paris.

They took advantage of the comfortable trip to rest a bit. Sarah slept almost the entire way, and Rafael leaned back in his seat, although only after making two inspections of the whole train. No one was following them.

Two hours and thirty-seven minutes later they arrived at the famous Gare du Nord in the center of Paris. From there they moved on to Orly. They had managed to disappear.

The Airbus A320 reached its cruising altitude of 36,000 at a speed of 540 miles per hour. Within approximately two hours it would land at Portela Airport, Lisbon, the destination of the 111 passengers that included Sarah Monteiro, now officially Sharon Stone, a French citizen, and Rafael, officially John Doe, a British subject. Flight TP433 had left Orly a bit more than twenty minutes before, behind schedule. Since they were both awake, Rafael had to face questions and more questions from the career reporter at his side.

Rafael had once heard someone say that “the fathers were in Jerusalem.” Probably the reference was to the mythical builders of the Temple of Solomon. Those venerable architects had conveyed their knowledge to the carpenters and stonecutters of the West, the same ones who erected the cathedrals in the Middle Ages. They were the maçons, users of the drop hammer, chisel, square, compass, and plumb line. Those powerful guilds knew the Lord’s secrets. Even now, in Notre Dame or Reims or Amiens, one could see that those men truly knew what God wanted for the world. The Lord Jesus Christ proclaimed: “Render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s.” The whole world knew this, including politicians, university professors, doctors, bankers, civil servants, soldiers, writers, and journalists. Even the pope knew it. “God is to be found everywhere, my child, even in arms factories and bank safe-deposit boxes.”

From what Rafael had heard, the Masons had been on the scaffolds when the bloody heads of kings and nobles rolled in revolutionary France. And later they were behind the wars and violent regime changes in Europe and the Americas. The members of the P2 could take satisfaction in belonging to the same organization as many presidents of the United States and of Europe.

In Rome, Italy ’s Grande Oriente began to suffer from internal schisms near the turn of the twentieth century. It was then that Propaganda Due was founded. Those who held the strings of power around the world complained that Masonry was being bandied about, with members’ names in the papers and their activities directed by inept, vain politicians. The number 2 would provide the anonymity they sought, ending the announcements, photos, and leaked names. The P2 did not exist. Nobody should know anything about it. The loggia coperta welcomed, among those privileged to know God, everybody ready to devote his life to building the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.

“Those were very bitter times for them,” Rafael told Sarah, who listened eagerly. “Hitler and Mussolini fascinated them, but as they saw it, their spiritual goals were being betrayed by those men.”

Licio Gelli, who headed Italian Masonry in the mid-twentieth century, was the true driving force of the P2 Lodge. “Gelli had more ideas than ability to carry out his projects,” Rafael told Sarah. The Grand Master of the Grande Oriente of Italy granted him powers far beyond his talents. Gelli was a small businessman from Tuscany who venerated Der Führer, Il Duce, and El Generalísimo. In fact, he enlisted as a volunteer, fighting against the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. He also served as a Nazi spy in the Balkans, actively collaborated with the CIA, and incited several coups d’état in South America.

“Gelli’s rise in the organization is a mystery,” Rafael continued. “The Lord’s ways are beyond understanding. That’s why it’s surprising how many idiots manage to gain power, glory, or fame.”

Licio Gelli was at the top of the P2 Lodge in the early seventies, and in 1971 he became one of the most powerful men in the underworld. Gelli, always with a penchant for conspiracy, founded the P1 Lodge, even more secret than the P2, exclusively to cover presidents, high dignitaries, secretaries general, and CEOs.

Some of Rafael’s older comrades told him about those meetings. As many as twenty shiny black armored cars with tinted windows would gather at a luxury hotel near Lake Como or in Geneva or Baden-Baden. The cars stayed for two or three hours, then left using back roads and eventually merged onto the European highways.

It was probably Gelli who persuaded many of the Masons from the Giustizia e Libertà organization to join the ranks of the P2. There they met with all sorts of politicians, military men, and bankers. They all felt privileged, belonging to such a select group.

“Vanity is a tragic flaw, Sarah. Gelli couldn’t resist having his picture taken with Juan Perón at the Casa Rosada.”

When Gelli found himself under judicial attack in the mid-seventies, he sealed off his organization, severing all ties with any other Masonic Lodge. That was how the P2 became a supersecret entity and Gelli himself became Grand Master. Those times were dubbed “the Cosa Nostra era.” The P2 operated exactly like mobsters or the Mafia-“the Gelli,” became their moniker. Gelli’s neofascist ideology prevented his lodge’s advancement in the divine master plan. But seen from a different angle, his work was highly effective, because his collaborators managed to infiltrate all sectors of the Italian government, in addition to the Vatican and several foreign national security agencies.

Many politicians during this period considered the real president of the country to be Licio Gelli, who manipulated the media, investigations, voting, and electoral campaigns so that the country’s top spot would be filled by his own predesignated nominee.