"Mr. President, the security for that convention is huge. I know, I helped set it up. Even if we get that far, we wouldn't get past it. We try and everyone who wants you out of the way will know exactly where you are. They'll order security to get you out right then. You don't know this but the chief of staff has a CIA jet waiting at a private airstrip outside Barcelona. They get you on that plane, you're finished."
For a long moment the president said nothing and it was clear he was turning everything over in his mind; finally he looked to Hap. "We're going to try for Aragon. I know you don't like it but it's my decision. As for the security, you know the layout there—the land, the buildings, the church where I was to speak. You scouted it all in advance."
"Yes, sir."
"Then somehow we'll find a way in. I will be the surprise speaker as planned. And it will be a surprise, for everyone."
There was a noise from above and José eased around the corner. He looked to Miguel. "There are patrols," he said in Spanish, "but they have passed. I don't know if there are more. For the moment it is safe."
Miguel translated and the president looked to each man in turn—Marten, Hap, Miguel, and José.
"Let's go," he said.
SUNDAY
APRIL 9
128
• 12:02 A.M.
Demi paced what was little more than a cell trying not to think of the horror Luciana had promised for "tomorrow," which, with the turn of the clock, was already here.
In front of her a small stainless-steel bunk was covered with a thin mattress and single blanket. As if she could sleep, or even try to. Next to it was a washbasin and next to that a toilet. And then there was the chapel. Set into the wall in the center of the room and lighted with what seemed a hundred votive candles. Little more than three feet wide and two deep, a small marble altar was at the back and on it sat something that at first appeared to be a piece of bronze sculpture. But when she looked at it closely she saw it was not a sculpture as much as a welding together of two letters.
μ
Then she realized they were what Giacomo Gela had spoken of—a Hebrew A followed by the Greek M. It wasn't a sculpture, it was an idol, the sign of Aradia Minor, the secretive order inside the already secretive boschetto of the Aldebaran. It meant everything he had warned her of was true and told her they had known who she was all along and had simply stepped back and watched her, wanting to see how much she knew and who else might be involved. It was why Beck had invited her to Barcelona after the incident between Foxx and Nicholas Marten on Malta, a deliberate plan to see who, if anyone, would follow. And Marten had. The trip to the cathedral with Beck and Luciana had not been for Luciana to arrange a meeting with Foxx at Montserrat but for the same reason, to see who would follow. Again Marten had. It was why, too, Beck had agreed to bring her to the church to witness the coven's rituals in return for delivering Marten to Foxx. In delivering Marten she had also delivered herself and in the process seen in the fiery death of the ox her own horrific fate. Afterward they'd simply brought her here and locked the door.
Just what the ancient cult of Aradia Minor was she had no idea, but she was certain Gela had been purposely mutilated and left to live as an example of what awaited anyone who might try to find out. Clearly they had watched Gela for years for that very reason, to see who was interested enough to find him, and then to learn who that person was and why they had come, and who else they might have told. It made her wonder how many others there had been over the centuries who had pursued the same course as she and fallen prey to the same unspeakable horror.
The same terrible burning horror that would soon be hers. The same horror that had been her mother's and that of twenty-six other women in her family. The same as it had been for the mothers, daughters, aunts, sisters, and cousins of other Italian families selected over the centuries. The same as it would be today, and not just for her but for Cristina.
Abruptly Demi stopped her pacing and crossed back to the altar. Before, in the church and under Luciana's gaze, the monks had stripped her of her cameras, then blindfolded her and led her down an extraordinarily long flight of steps. Soon afterward they'd put her onto some kind of open-air transport that moved quickly forward on a ride she was certain had been underground. After that they'd brought her to the cell where she was now, locking her in and leaving without a word.
But that had been all. They had not bothered to search her, either in the church or here when they brought her in and removed the blindfold. It meant she still had the hidden smart phone/camera she had used to transmit photos to her Web site in Paris. It was something that gave her hope because she still had communication out—although two unsuccessful tries here told her she was too far underground for the signal to escape whatever was above her. Still, she had both phone and camera. The phone she would do everything in her power to use later, when hopefully they brought her to an area where she would have connectivity and could somehow steal a moment alone to call the Pan-European emergency number 112 and ask for the police. The camera she would use now to help her keep what little sanity she had left, to prevent her from dwelling on the horrifying certainty of what was to come in the next few hours.
Demi knelt before the altar and began to photograph the idol, the symbol of Aradia Minor. She took pictures aggressively and passionately and from every angle. As she worked she began to realize that what she was doing was more than a deliberate distraction; it was a last desperate hope that in one way or another she might find a bridge to the Other Side and somehow touch her mother. To make contact with the spirit of who she had been, and to Demi, still was, even in death. In doing so, she would not only fulfill her promise to her but also to find everlasting love and salvation.
129
• 12:07 A.M.
Hector and Amado stood in the bright light of the command post. They were dirty and scraped and afraid, but so far they hadn't broken. Not to the Secret Service and Spanish CNP officers that had caught them in the tunnel. Not to the CIA investigators who had talked to them next. Or the half dozen Secret Service and CNP troops that had brought them back up through the chimneys and walked them through the rain to the command post. Both had stood by their story: they had simply come up that morning to explore the tunnels and become lost.
"What time?" Captain Diaz asked in Spanish.
"Nine thirty, about," was their agreed-upon answer, the one they had decided on in the seconds before the troops were first upon them.
"Where do you live?" Captain Diaz continued.
Bill Strait and National Security Adviser James Marshall stood behind her; each man fully intent on the proceedings.
"El Borràs, by the river," Amado answered.
"Just you two. Alone. No one else with you."
"Yes. I mean, no. I mean just us."
Captain Diaz studied the boys for a moment and walked over to a CNP officer. "Let's talk to them separately," she said, then walked back to the boys.
"Which one is Hector?"
Hector raised his hand.
"Good. You stay with me. Amado is going to talk to some people on the far side of the tent."
Hector watched as Amado went off with two CNP officers.
"Now, Hector," Captain Diaz said, "you live in El Borràs."
"Yes."
"Tell me how you got here. From the river to this mountaintop."
• 12:12 A.M.
Hector watched as Captain Diaz left him and crossed the tent to talk with one of the CNP officers who had gone off with Amado. Nervously he glanced at Bill Strait and the exceedingly tall and distinguished man with him. Both were clearly American. For the first time he was aware of the people and equipment around him. He had seen radios and computer setups in movies but they had been nothing like this. Nor had he ever heard anything like the constant crackle of communication between the operators here and the people they were talking with outside. And nothing ever like the absolute seriousness of the atmosphere.
He took a breath
as he saw Captain Diaz come back, stopping midway to say something to Bill Strait and the man with him, and then all three came toward him.
"There seems to be a conflict here, Hector," Captain Diaz said calmly. "You told me you hiked up from the river. Amado seems to remember you riding up on motorcycles."
"Hector," Bill Strait was looking at him directly, "we know you and Amado weren't the only people down there." He paused for Captain Diaz to translate.
"Yes, we were," Hector protested. "Who else would be with us?"
"The president of the United States."
"No," Hector said defiantly. He needed no translation. "No."
"Hector, listen to me carefully. When we find the president we will know you were lying and you will go to prison for a very, very long time."
Captain Diaz's translation was delivered as if what Bill Strait had said was already a given, a twenty- or thirty-year prison sentence handed down by a judge.
"No," he said, "we were alone. Amado and me. Nobody else. Ask your men. They looked, they found nothing."
Suddenly Hector felt a presence and looked up. Amado came toward him accompanied by two CNP officers. His complexion was white, his eyes filled with tears. There was no need for words. What had happened was all too clear.
He had told them.
130
• 12:18 A.M.
The ascent from the lower chimney to the main tunnel had been done with relative ease. The next, the hundred-yard marching along it, had been made quickly and without incident even in the dark. Then José had found the opening to the upper chimney, the one Hap, Miguel, he, Amado, and Hector had come down in what felt like days, even weeks earlier.
They were in it and climbing when Hap suddenly grunted and stopped. Miguel put a narrow flashlight beam on him and they could see the color had drained from him and that he was sweating heavily. Quickly Miguel gave him water from his camel pack and insisted he take another pain pill and he had.
Now the five sat in stillness, giving him a chance to rest and wait for the medication to take effect. In another circumstance they might have left him and gone on alone with his blessing but they couldn't. He had walked the entire Aragon resort only weeks earlier in preparation for the president's visit and knew the details of its layout as only a man with his training and experience could. If they were going to make it at all, they needed Hap. Whether a short rest would be enough, there was no way to know.
• 12:23 A.M.
"The football, Mr. President," Marten said in the darkness and for no other reason than he'd been thinking about it, "that black satchel the public sees a military aide carrying around everywhere the president goes. I assume it really does have the codes for launching nuclear missiles."
"Yes."
"Excuse my asking but where is it now?"
"I would assume 'my friends' have it. I couldn't very well have taken it with me when I left."
"Your 'friends' have it?"
"It doesn't make any difference."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"There's more than one," Hap suddenly joined the conversation.
"What?"
"The president has one when he travels. There's another tucked away at the White House and a third is available to the vice president in the event the president is unable to function. Such as now."
"You mean they have it anyway."
"Yes, they have it anyway. . . . Any other questions?"
"Not for the moment."
"Good," Hap suddenly pushed himself to his feet. "Let's get moving before more 'rescuers' arrive."
• 12:32 A.M.
They stopped a dozen feet short of the chimney opening and sent José to the top as they had before.
• 12:36 A.M.
José climbed back down and spoke to Miguel in Spanish. Miguel listened and then turned to the others. "There are low clouds and it is raining," he translated quietly. "He heard nothing and saw no lights. When we get out, we follow him closely over open rock. Very soon there will be a steep path; it goes up for a short distance, then cuts back down through some brush and continues down through switchbacks for maybe a half mile before it ends in an arroyo. Afterward we follow the arroyo to a stream crossing. On the other side we pick up a trail through the woods that goes for at least another two miles before we hit an open space."
"Then what?" the president asked.
"We'll see when we get that far," Hap said flatly. "The weather will reduce the effectiveness of thermal imaging, but this is a game of little steps. If we cover almost three miles in the dark and rain without attracting visitors, that's huge. I hope not impossible."
"Are you up to it?" the president was genuinely concerned about Hap's condition.
"I'm ready when you are, Mr. President."
131
• 12:38 A.M.
It had taken Jim Marshall nearly twenty minutes to locate the vice president and have him connected to a secure phone. Word that the president had been seen alive, and in the shafts, and with a man fitting the description of Nicholas Marten within the past hour had disturbed the vice president but not enough to steer either him or Marshall off course. To both it was the same as it had been from the beginning when the president had gone missing in Madrid and then was located in Barcelona: he was either Marten's prisoner or he was mentally ill. In a way the situation now was better than it had been because they knew for certain where he was. Hundreds of people were zeroed in on the area with more on the way. It was only a matter of time, hours, maybe even minutes, before he was found. After that he would be in their custody and on his way out of Spain and to their isolated undisclosed location in Switzerland.
"You're right there on top of it, Jim. Nobody better to make sure it happens the way it needs to," the vice president reassured him.
"You'll inform the others."
"Right away. Let me know the minute you have him and are airborne."
"Done," Marshall said, and hung up. Immediately he went to find Bill Strait, who, along with Captain Diaz, was caught in the adrenaline-driven rush to coordinate the movements of people still underground while managing the setup and logistics for the wave of new forces being scrambled to come in.
Marshall pulled Strait aside to walk him through the confusion of the command post tent and out into the rain, where they could be alone.
"Once he's found, he and Marten are to be separated right away. Take Marten into our custody and fly him to the embassy in Madrid to be held there incommunicado for debriefing.
"No questions to the president by anyone, no conversation with him at all other than medical if he needs it. He's brought straight to the Chinook, the door closes, and we go, wheels up right then. That's it. Nothing else at all. Anyone questions it, it is a direct order from the vice president. Make certain everyone knows. Your people, CIA, Captain Diaz and her ops, everyone."
"Yes, sir."
132
• 12:43 A.M
They looked like ghosts.
Survival blankets over their heads Mylar side out and belted loosely around their bodies, eyeholes cut, the four followed José out of the fracture at the top of the chimney and then across a flat rock face to a steep narrow path between high rock formations. A few feet more and they stopped and listened. Nothing but the sound of the wind and the gentle beat of the rain on Mylar.
Miguel nodded and José led them on. Marten was second, then the president, then Hap, and then Miguel. Hap with the 9mm Sig Sauer automatic held just inside the Mylar, covering Miguel doing the same, his finger on the trigger of the Steyr machine pistol.
• 12:49 A.M.
They were on the far side of the rocks and descending along a steep, brush-lined path made up of gravelly sandstone. In the dark and rain it was impossible to know if they were leaving tracks that could be followed later. The other thing was the Mylar. At this point it was impossible to tell if their body heat was reading "cold" to the satellite watching from God-only-knew-how-many-miles-above-them or if
their body signatures had already been read "hot" and heavily armed ops were on their way to intercept them.
Marten looked up through the rain, trying to see the ridgeline above them, his view narrowed by the eyeholes cut in the Mylar. He saw nothing but blackness and started to look away. In that second he saw a bright light swing over the hilltop.
"Everybody down!" he warned.
As one the men dropped to the ground, pulling back toward the brush. Seconds later one and then two jet helicopters passed over, their bright searchlights sliding over the hillside just above them. Then they were gone.
"The extra bodies are here," Hap said in the darkness. "There'll be a lot more. They weren't looking for us, just going in to land. Means, for the moment, they still think we're underground."
"Then these Mylars are working," Miguel said.
"Or somebody's not paying attention. Or the satellite's not working or it's out of orbit," Hap said. "Every second they give us, we'll take." Abruptly he stood up. "Let's go! Move!"
• 12:53 A.M.
Captain Diaz touched Bill Strait's arm. He turned to look at her.
"CNP helicopter pilot coming in reported a reflection of something on the ground five kilometers before he touched down," she said. "He's not sure what it was, maybe debris of some kind or even someone camping. He didn't think much of it at the time but then thought he should report it anyway. Pilot of the second chopper saw nothing."