Marten looked to the president. "Hurry!"
The president pulled the belt from his trousers, stepped around Marten, and tugged Foxx's arms tight behind him. Then, as if he were back in his California youth and hog-tying a steer, he crossed Foxx's hands over each other and wrapped the belt around them. Seconds later he and Marten hefted the South African onto the stainless-steel table, sliding his bound arms down over the top of one of the upturned table legs as they did.
• 2:16 P.M.
Groaning, coughing, his chest heaving as his lungs fought to draw in air, thirty seconds later Foxx regained consciousness. Another minute and the fog began to clear from his brain and he looked into the faces of Cousin Jack and Cousin Harold. Then his eyes swung to Marten and his presence sharpened.
"That was a police hold," he rasped. "You were a policeman once. Maybe still are."
The president glanced at Marten, but Marten didn't acknowledge. He looked back to Foxx. "I want to know what you have planned for the Muslim states."
For a long moment Foxx was expressionless; then slowly he smiled. A great, broad, chilling grin full of arrogance, even defiance. It was the look of a learned madman, one fully capable of executing a plan of mass murder and thoroughly enjoying it. "Only goodwill, gentlemen."
"I'll try once again. I want to know what you and your friends in Washington have planned for the Muslim states, for the Middle East."
Foxx's eyes darted between the president and Marten.
"One last chance, doctor," the president said.
Foxx looked at the president. "Mr. Marten seems to have put some rather peculiar ideas in your head."
The president took a breath and looked to Marten. "I think we should proceed, Cousin." Abruptly he slid a half-liter bottle of Vichy Catalan mineral water he'd purchased at the restaurant Abat Cisneros. He handed it to Marten.
Marten took it, then stared at Foxx. "Sparkling water. 'Con gas' as they say here. Maybe a little primitive for someone like you, doctor. An old border cop showed it to me. He used it to get drug traffickers and people smugglers to talk. They usually did."
Foxx's eyes went to the bottle. If he knew what was about to happen, he didn't show it.
"One final time, Dr. Foxx," President Harris said carefully. He wanted no misunderstandings. "What do you have planned for the Muslim states?"
"Peace on earth," Foxx smiled once more. "Goodwill toward men."
Marten looked to Harris, "You have a napkin from the restaurant?"
"Yes."
"The barnyard animals we talked about, held down for a shot from the vet. They don't like it; the doctor won't either. Take the napkin and stuff it in his mouth, then grab his head and hold him hard."
The next came fast and ugly. President Harris pulled a white cloth table napkin from his pocket and shoved it toward Foxx's open mouth. Foxx snapped it closed, twisting his head to the side. Marten hesitated for a split second, then closed his fist and drove it like a hammer into Foxx's stomach. Foxx cried out, and the president stuffed the napkin into the wide-open gorge of his mouth.
At the same time Marten twisted the top from the Vichy Catalan bottle, put his thumb over the top, and shook it hard. The bubbles inside collided violently, compressing into what was very nearly a handheld bomb. Foxx tried to twist away again. But the president had his head in a viselike grip. Marten shook the bottle again, shoved it under Foxx's right nostril, and released his thumb.
An explosion of compressed air and mineral water shot up Foxx's nose. He groaned, the pain in his sinuses, in the front of his brain, excruciating. He kicked and flailed wildly, trying to pull away, to spit the napkin from his mouth.
The harder he fought the harder Marten followed. Shaking the bottle, again and then again, blasting the carbonated water up one nostril and then the other. Foxx was strong, as Harris had promised and Marten had seen in the restaurant. Jerking back, he got a knee up and slammed it into the president's face. Harris cried out and started to fall back, then recovered, holding on as Foxx wrenched one way and then the other, trying over and over to spit out the napkin so he could breathe and at the same time avoid Marten's onslaught.
"That's enough," the president said.
Marten ignored him. Kept on. Thumb over top of bottle. Shake the bottle. Bottle up against Foxx's nose. Pull back thumb. Release cannonade of carbonated water.
"I said that's enough! I want answers, not a dead man!"
Suddenly Foxx's eyes twisted up under their lids, and his flailing all but ceased.
"Stop! Stop it!" President Harris let go of Foxx and grabbed Marten, pulling him away. "Enough! Dammit! Enough!"
Marten stumbled back to stare at him wide-eyed. The prize fighter shoved into his corner, chest heaving, eyes locked on his beaten and pummeled quarry, confused, wondering why the fight had been stopped.
Abruptly Harris moved in, blocking Marten's view of Foxx and getting right in his face. "You're letting what he did to Caroline Parsons run away with you. I don't blame you, but right now your own private feelings are something none of us can afford."
Marten didn't react.
The president stayed in his face, nose to nose. "You're killing him. Do you understand me? If you haven't already."
Slowly Marten regained his composure. "Sorry," he said finally. "I'm sorry."
The president stayed where he was for a moment longer, then turned to Foxx. His head was at an angle. His eyes still turned up under their lids. Mucus and spent mineral water ran from his nose and onto the table. He snorted, trying to get air and at the same time get rid of whatever liquid still remained in his nasal passages.
Immediately Harris bent over him and pulled the napkin from his mouth. There was a resounding gasp as Foxx's lungs filled with air.
"Can you hear me, doctor?" the president said.
There was no reply.
"Doctor Foxx, can you hear me?"
For a long moment nothing happened, and then came a vague nod of the head. The president eased him over, and Foxx's eyes came down from under their lids to stare at Harris.
"Do you recognize me?"
Foxx nodded almost imperceptibly.
"Can you breathe?"
Again the nod. Stronger this time. So was his breathing.
"I want to know what you are planning for the Middle East. When it is to happen, exactly where, and who else is involved. If you won't tell me we will repeat the procedure."
Foxx didn't respond, just lay there staring at the president. Then ever so slowly, his eyes went to Marten and held there.
"What are you planning for the Middle East?" the president repeated. "When is it to happen? Exactly where? Who else is involved?"
Foxx lay silent and motionless, staring at Marten. Then his eyes came back to Harris and his lips moved. "Alright," he breathed, "I will tell you."
The president and Marten exchanged hugely emotional glances. Finally. After everything. They were going to have an answer.
"Tell me all of it, every detail," the president demanded. "What are you planning for the Middle East?"
"Death," Foxx said with no emotion whatsoever.
Then, with a sharp glance at Marten, he bit down hard, grinding his teeth together.
"Grab him!" Marten yelled, moving toward Foxx. "Grab him! Open his mouth!"
Marten shoved a stunned President Harris aside, then took hold of Foxx's jaws and tried to pry them open. It was too late. Whatever it was worked extremely fast. Merriman Foxx was already dead.
94
• 2:25 P.M.
Hap Daniels flung a rented dark maroon Audi around a tour bus and accelerated up the steep road leading to the Benedictine monastery at Montserrat. When he got there it would be needle-in-the-haystack time, fighting through a mass of tourists looking for a balding, toupeeless John Henry Harris and Nicholas Marten, whom he had seen in person only once and then very briefly.
At the same time he would be trying to find an attractive young French photographer called Demi Picard
who, as the concierge at the Regente Majestic had said, had short dark hair, wore a navy blazer and tan slacks, and was most likely in the company of a middle-aged African-American male and an older European woman. Add to that the fact that he was following a raft of information he thought was correct but had no way of knowing for certain and going to a place he'd never been. Never mind that he was traveling on little more than coffee, adrenaline, and twenty minutes' sleep.
He passed another tour bus, then several cars, then squealed around a sharp turn. As he did he glanced up at the cliffs above him and got a momentary glimpse of the monastery and the mountainside into which it was built. How many more turns there were in the road or how much longer it would take to get there he had no way to know.
He had come this far because of the story he'd told his deputy, Bill Strait: that Assistant Secret Service Director Ted Langway, still in Madrid and working out of the U.S. embassy there, "has been on my ass all morning asking for a detailed briefing. [Which was true.] He just called again [which wasn't], so I don't have any damn choice but to talk to him. I'm going to check into the hotel, deal with him, then take a shower and a real nap, a couple of hours anyway. Call my cell if you need me."
With that he'd put Strait officially in charge, made certain things were coordinated between his Secret Service detail and the vice president's for the vice president's 13:00 arrival at Barcelona Airport, then gone to the Hotel Colon, where the Secret Service had reserved a number of rooms. Once in his room, he'd taken a quick shower, changed his clothes, then armed himself and left by a side door. Fifteen minutes later he drove the maroon Audi rental fast out of Barcelona, headed for the monastery at Montserrat. By then it was seven minutes past one in the afternoon. Seven minutes since the vice president of the United States, Hamilton Rogers, had touched down on Barcelona soil.
• 2:28 P.M.
"Suicide pill. Poison capsule buried in his right rear upper molar," Marten turned from Merriman Foxx's body to look at the president. "All he had to do was give it one good crunch to activate it, and he did. I worried he might do something like this earlier but I never thought he would have it as a permanent implant."
"If there was ever any doubt of how committed these people are, there's none now," the president said grimly. "It's what it must have been like in the Nazi camp in World War Two. Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, and the rest hammering ahead with their genocidal crusade, all the while they have Dr. Mengele doing his horrible experiments at the extermination camps. Who knows what would have happened if he ever began to use them on a massive scale?"
"The difference now is that our Dr. Mengele is dead."
"His plan isn't dead. Neither is theirs," Harris snapped. "And we didn't learn a damn thing about it. Nothing." Abruptly he looked off, to just stand there detached and silent. Clearly he was thinking about what to do next.
Marten watched him. He'd been too rough on Foxx and he knew it. The president was right. It had all been emotion. About Caroline, about everything she had meant to him for so much of his life, every piece of it compounded by his rage over her murder. On the other hand it was clear the South African had long been prepared to take his own life if he had to. He was a professional in the field of human pain and might well have been aware of his own physical threshold, of how much he could stand without breaking, and that had been both the reason and the motivation for the implant; it was not the fear of death but the fear of giving up information that would harm the cause. It made the president's remark about the commitment of these people all the more terrifying. These weren't a handful of zealots; they were part of a highly organized, well-funded, hugely dangerous movement.
"Mr. President," Marten said abruptly. "I think we can safely assume that at some point Foxx confirmed your presence here to your Washington friends." He walked over and picked up the BlackBerry-like device Foxx had taken from his pocket and then dropped when Marten grabbed him. "I would bet he was trying to contact them when I got him. They don't hear from him and soon, they're coming fast and right here. It's what I said earlier. We need to call Miguel and get the hell out. Go back to the tourist area and hide somewhere until he comes."
"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."
95
• 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?"
&nbs
p; "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.