The Machiavelli Covenant

  The chant of the monks abruptly stopped and the church filled with silence. Fog swirled on the stage where Cristina sat enraptured, joyfully waiting for the moment the fire would come and her journey, like that of the ox, would begin.

  Suddenly a figure moved past her through the fog like some Shakespearean character. Another spotlight shone, illuminating Reverend Beck dressed in clerical vestments. He crossed to the front of the stage and lifted a cordless microphone.

  "Hamilton Rogers," he said, his eyes searching the audience, his voice resounding through the church's state-of-the-art speaker system. "Where are you, Mr. Vice President?"

  • 8:45 A.M.

  A great roar came from the crowd as five separate remote cameras picked up Vice President Hamilton Rogers getting up from his seat and moving to the aisle, where monks escorted him toward the stage. When he reached it, he bounded up to embrace Reverend Beck as if this were some kind of revival meeting.

  "Hamilton Rogers," Beck said to the congregation. "The next president of the United States!"

  Thunderous applause followed.

  Beck and Rogers again embraced warmly, then turned, grasped hands, and lifted their arms to the crowd. Wave after wave of applause followed. The revival had suddenly become a political grandstand.

  • 8:46 A.M.

  Marten looked to the president. "If there was ever any question about their plans for you, there's none now."

  "The thing is," the president said, "it's not just 'my friends' anymore. It's all of them. They all know what's going on. It shows how incredibly intertwined and indoctrinated they are. They're not ordinary human beings. They're another species altogether. One whose entire ideology is filled with unbridled arrogance."

  • 8:47 A.M.

  Hamilton Rogers motioned for silence. In seconds the applause stopped, Reverend Beck handed the microphone to the vice president, and Rogers stepped to the front of the stage. He looked to the congregation and began calling out names, recognizing new members. One by one they stood: a young CEO of a Taiwanese export company; a middle-aged woman who was a strong, left-of-center Central American politician; a fifty-two-year-old Australian investment banker; a sixty-seven-year-old Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist from California; a seventy-year-old famously conservative Italian media mogul; and then another and another. Thundering applause followed each. Politically left, right, or center, the affiliation didn't seem to matter.

  And then Vice President Rogers called out the rest. These were not new members but "old friends," he said, "dear, dear friends, longtime members joining us up here for this momentous occasion.

  "United States Congresswoman Jane Dee Baker. United States Secretary of State David Chaplin. Secretary of Defense Terrence Langdon. United States Air Force General and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chester Keaton. Presidential Chief of Staff Tom Curran. Presidential confidant Evan Byrd."

  Again the church filled with ear-shattering applause. Applause that grew louder and louder as one by one the audience stood to proudly and patriotically salute those whom Rogers had designated.

  155

  • 8:53 A.M.

  Marten whirled at the knock on the control-room door, the Sig Sauer coming up in his hand. Hap stepped in front of the president, swinging the machine pistol.

  Hurriedly the knock came again. One, two, three.

  "It's José," Marten said.

  Hap nodded and Marten went to the door and cautiously opened it. José stood there alone. His eyes intense, his body wound tight. Marten let him in and then locked the door.

  "What is it?" the president asked in Spanish.

  "I went down into the church as far as I could," he said in Spanish. "Through the door there are big wide stairs and then a big steel door. Also an elevator, I think. But everything is locked. No one is there. If there is a tunnel further down we cannot get to it."

  "Gracias, José, muchas gracias," the president said gratefully, then smiled. "Está bien, relájate." It's alright, relax.

  Immediately the president looked to Marten and Hap and translated.

  "All we can do is wait and hope no one comes," Hap nodded at the monitors. "I'm assuming that when the ceremony is over the hydraulic stage will come back down, the original floor will slide back into place, and the monks will unlock the doors. After that everyone will go out to the buses as if nothing has happened. That's when we move. Up the stairs and out the way we came in. We don't go then we're dead in the water because the minute the guests have cleared the area the Spanish Secret Service will sweep the building and then lock it up tight."

  "What about Cristina?" Marten snapped. "They're going to kill her."

  Hap stared at him. "There's nothing we can do about her without endangering the president. Understand that and put her out of your mind."

  "I understand it. I don't like it."

  "Neither do I. It's just the way it is."

  Marten stared back, then finally relented. "We get out. Then what?" he said quietly. "Where do we go? There are five hundred men out there, most of them focused on this building and the people inside it."

  "We go out," Hap said calmly, "get in the cart, go back to the place we hid coming up. Security should depart the area in less than an hour after everyone leaves. After that we take it from there."

  "Hap, your people are still out there with the Spanish police. They don't find us on the mountain, they'll start this way—maybe they already have. They're not going home until they have the president."

  "Marten, we can't stay here."

  "Woody," the president looked at Hap.

  "Woody?"

  "We take the chance he's not corrupted. As soon as we're out and you have a clear signal, text-message him on his cell phone. Tell him where we are and to get the hell in here fast with his chopper. Just him and the helo, nobody else. People will be leaving. It's a Marine Corps helicopter, nobody will know what's going on. He touches down in the back parking lot where we left the cart. Thirty seconds, we're on it and out of here."

  "Mr. President, even if it works, he flies in and picks us up, we don't know what he'll do afterward. He could fly us straight to the waiting CIA jet. He does that and there're twenty guys under orders to get you to wherever they're supposed to take you and what you or I say won't matter."

  "Hap," the president took a deliberate breath, "at some point damn soon we're going to have to trust somebody. I like Major Woods for a lot of reasons and always have. What I've given you are orders."

  "Yes, sir."

  Suddenly Reverend Beck's voice boomed through the speakers. They turned to see the congressional chaplain on every monitor. Speaking into the cordless microphone, red, green, and amber light playing on him from below, he crossed the darkened stage in a trail of theatrical fog. Whatever he was saying was in a language none of them had ever heard. He spoke again, as if it was a line of verse in adoration of someone or something. The New World members responded like a chorus in the same language, the way the families had the night before in the amphitheater.

  Beck spoke again, then stopped and extended his hand to Cristina, still spotlighted on the darkened stage. She smiled proudly as Beck spoke again. A second spotlight followed him as he turned from Cristina and addressed the congregation, his right hand circling the stage the way he had done in the amphitheater. It was a call that demanded response from the congregation, and they did, repeating in enthusiastic unison what he had said. Abruptly the light swung from Beck and onto Luciana, her sharply pulled-back hair and daggered eye makeup radiating the power and nightmare fear of witchcraft.

  In her hand was the ruby wand, and she moved behind Cristina, using it to draw a circle in the air above her head. Then her eyes found the congregation, and she called out a phrase. Everything about her was controlling and certain. She called it out once again, then turned and crossed the stage, the remote cameras following her through the fog.

  Now she was on a dozen monitors, her eyes frozen on something before her. Then a ha
lf dozen cameras showed what it was.

  Demi. Her body bound to a massive Aldebaran cross. Her eyes frozen in terror said everything. She was a living creature on the threshold of certain and horrific death.

  "My God!" Marten blurted in shock and disbelief.

  Luciana stopped before her, and the monks' chant began anew. Their voices rose to a crescendo, then fell quickly, only to rise again. Luciana stared at Demi, her posture grand and filled with contempt. Then Demi's eyes rose to meet hers and she returned the stare, defying her, giving the witch nothing. Luciana smiled cruelly and turned to the crowd.

  "She would betray us as these have!" she said suddenly in English, a sweep of the ruby wand pointed at the heads on the Aldebaran crosses. In the next instant she uttered three sharp, distinctive words in the language she had spoken before. Immediately blue-red flame burst through the fog from gas jets in the floor beneath the heads. As it did a great cry went up from the congregation.

  The monitors showed people leaning forward in their seats, straining to see. In seconds the heads were on fire. A half minute later their skin blistered up like meat thrown on a barbecue.

  Immediately Demi's face filled a half dozen monitor screens. She screamed and kept on screaming. Four other monitors showed Cristina looking at her in alarm, as if the drugs given her before had worn off and she realized what was happening. Suddenly her eyes went wide as two monks appeared from the fog and dark and strapped her quickly and tightly to the throne. As quickly they stepped back and disappeared from view. All the while other monitors focused on the burning heads. On Luciana and Beck. Followed in rapid succession by cuts on people in the congregation. Then the cameras moved in for close-ups of the newly introduced members of the institute.

  A heartbeat later they cut to the vice president's "dear, dear friends"—Congresswoman Jane Dee Baker; Secretary of State David Chaplin; Secretary of Defense Terrence Langdon; chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Chester Keaton; Chief of Staff Tom Curran; and presidential confidant Evan Byrd.

  The president had been right when he said they were of another species altogether. No one there was merely a participant in murder or witness to an execution. There was another level to it entirely. Like Romans at the Colosseum's ancient barbaric spectacles, they were there for the show because it gave them immense and untold pleasure.

  "This is just the beginning," the president said, his voice cracking in horror. An unthinkable situation made ten thousand times worse because he knew there was absolutely nothing they could do about it.

  "The women will burn next."

  156

  The hell they will. Neither one of them." Marten was already moving for the door.

  Hap grabbed him just as he reached it and shoved him hard against the wall. "You try and help them, you expose the president. They know he's with you. They'll know he's in the building. I told you before, put it out of your mind. It's just the goddamn way it is."

  "No! It's not the way it is. I'm not going to let those women be burned alive." Marten looked angrily at the president. "Tell him to let go of me! Tell him now!"

  "The president doesn't have a vote here," Hap kept Marten pinned against the wall. "I have a sworn obligation to protect and maintain the continuation of the government, to protect the person who is president. No one in this room is going anywhere until I say so."

  The chanting started again as the monks formed a large figure eight on the stage, then began what seemed like some carefully choreographed dance, circling first Cristina and then Demi and then repeating it, their song rising and falling in a ghostly, macabre timbre that was both emotionally powerful and wholly unnerving.

  "Hap," the president said deliberately, "you know the layout of the building. The way up to the church proper, to the door behind the altar I was going to use to make my entrance. How long would it take Marten to get to that door from here?"

  "Without trouble, I'd guess about forty seconds. Why?"

  "The electrical panels are in there." The president indicated the locked narrow door in the wall next to them. "We give Marten those forty seconds, then shut off the power. Maybe a few emergency lights will come on, but except for the brightness of the flame from the gas jets the whole place basically goes dark. There were flashlights near a workbench in the storeroom we were first in. Marten goes there, takes two of them, puts one in his belt, uses the other to light his way to the altar door. When he gets there he goes through it and walks calmly onto the stage, flashlight in hand. He's still in his groundskeeper's uniform. It's dark. Nobody knows what's going on. He shines the light around like he's a maintenance man there to fix the problem. Then sets it on the stage, the light still on, drawing attention. Somebody questions him, he doesn't reply. He calmly walks around behind the women as if he's looking to repair something, then cuts them free, takes them back through the altar door, and uses the other flashlight to get back down the stairs to the corridor near the door where we came in. We're already there waiting and all of us go out it. The time from when Marten leaves to when we leave the building shouldn't be more than four, five minutes. Six at most."

  "Cousin," Marten said, "all the doors to the outside are electronically locked."

  "My guess is the minute the power is cut the door locks release. They wouldn't chance trapping all these VIPs during a power loss. If the fire brigade had to break in to free them, their whole game could be revealed." He looked to Hap. "You agree?"

  "Mr. President. Just damn forget it!"

  "Do you agree, Hap?" The president pressed him firmly.

  "About the locks, yes. Not the rest of it, not for a second."

  The president ignored his protest. "It'll be a shock when they realize the women are gone. The whole place will erupt, but it'll take more than a few minutes to figure out what happened. By then we're out, either in the cart and gone back down the hill or out of sight because Woody's coming in with the chopper."

  "Mr. President, we just can't risk—"

  "Hap, we have one shot," the president was still pushing and hard. It was the way he did things when he believed in something but still valued someone else's opinion. If it could be done, say so. If it couldn't, say that too. "Can Marten do it?"

  "The sudden blackout. The surprise. The quick in and out. With a team, maybe. But for one man alone whose only knowledge of the target area is from the monitors and he's trying to work fast and in the dark . . . and not just any one man—the minute Marten steps into the light of those gas jets Beck is going to recognize him. Those monks rush him and suddenly he's in a one-man war and they know you're somewhere here. It's a helluva risk, Mr. President, an easy ninety-nine-to-one against."

  "Marten and I were alone in the dark in the tunnels. We took a helluva risk there too and nobody was giving any odds at all. Hap, the power is off, the doors unlock, it lets us choose the time when we move and go out. All of us, the women included."

  Hap glanced at Marten, then took a breath and relented. "Okay," he said, "okay," then ran a hand through his hair and turned away. His concession hadn't been because of the women or the force of the president's personality but because of the situation. He had given in for the same reason he had when the president had demanded that they alert Woody and order him to fly in for an air rescue: opportunity.

  The president had been right when he said at some point "damn soon" they were going to have to trust somebody and despite his concern about trusting anyone, if he had to choose someone here and now it would be Woody, if for no other reason than his flying skills. He could come in over those treetops, set the chopper down in that small parking lot behind the church and get them the hell out of there faster and more safely than anyone he knew. In the worst-case scenario afterward, if he tried to fly them to the CIA jet, both Hap and Marten were armed and could force him to set the aircraft down wherever they chose.

  The situation here was more immediate. One way or another they would soon be trying to get out to that parking lot and text-messaging Woody
for rescue. By cutting the building's power, which he agreed would most probably release the electronic door locks, it would let them set their own timetable for when they would go out instead of having to wait for the ceremony to end and be at the mercy of whatever else might happen then.

  Added to that was the fact that Marten's attempt to rescue the women would cause a major disruption in the church. Whatever Marten did when he went in would happen fast and mostly in the dark. Because of it the vice president, Beck, Luciana, the monks, everyone, would be taken wholly by surprise. Maybe Marten and the women would escape, maybe not, but either way confusion would rule. It was just that upheaval that Hap saw as giving him the best opportunity yet to get the president out alive.

  "Me." Abruptly José stepped forward. He looked at the president and spoke in Spanish, "I understand a little of what you are saying. I will go with Mr. Marten. Together we will be Hap's 'team.' "

  The president stared at him, then smiled. "Gracias," he said and quickly translated.

  "What the hell is he going to do but get in the way?" Hap said.

  "Be a diversion," Marten said quickly. "He's Spanish. He's dressed in a maintenance uniform. He becomes the front guy out there on the stage with a flashlight. Somebody asks him a question, he answers something like the power went out and he was told to see if he could fix it." Marten paused. "It gives me time, Hap. Thirty seconds, a minute when everyone's looking at him and I'm on the back part of the stage going for the women."

  "Right," Hap agreed. It was one more card for them to play in the darkened church, giving them that much more of a complication and that much more of a chance to get the president out.

  Immediately the president nodded toward the locked narrow door in the wall. "Open that up and let's look at the electrical panels. Shoot the locks off—there's no time for anything else."