"You mean you want to take her with us."
"Mr. Marten, I've said time is very short. If she knows something about Dr. Foxx, I need to learn what it is. As I said before, I have probably lingered here too long as it is. So yes, dangerous and foolhardy as it might be if she is working for Foxx, I want to take her with us. That is if she'll go."
"I don't doubt that she'll go, because she wants very much to talk to me. But if she does, you'll run a great risk of having her realize who you are."
"I run the same risk here. If she can get us to Dr. Foxx or even near enough so we can find him ourselves, it's worth the chance," the president paused and his voice became nearly a whisper. "Mr. Marten, it means that much."
Abruptly there was a sharp knock at the door. A second knock followed. "It's Demi," she said from the hallway.
Marten looked at the president, "You're sure?"
"Yes."
Marten nodded, then opened the door. Demi came in quickly and he closed it. In almost the same instant he felt her hand on his arm. "Who is he?" She was staring at President Harris.
"I, uh—" Marten stammered. This was something they hadn't discussed at all. How to introduce the president to her.
"Bob," Harris took care of the situation himself, smiling and extending his hand. "Bob Rader, I'm an old friend of Nicholas. We bumped into each other unexpectedly."
She stared at him for a heartbeat longer, just enough to digest his presence, then looked back to Marten. "We have to talk. Alone. Now."
"Demi, Bob knows what's going on. Whatever you have to say you can say in front of him."
"No, it's something else."
"What?"
Her eyes flashed from one man to the other, "Four people came in off the street and into the hotel when I did. One was a hotel guest who rode up in the elevator with me. The other three, two men and a woman, went to the front desk. One of them carried a copy of La Van-guardia, the edition of the newspaper your photograph was in. The one taken with our friend in the yellow polo shirt from the restaurant, the dead man you were kneeling beside in the street."
"So?"
"I think they were police."
57
• RIVOLI JARDÍN HOTEL, LOBBY, 3:07 A.M.
"¿Es este Señor Marten?" Is this Mr. Marten? Barcelona police plainclothes detective Iuliana Ortega demanded, showing Marten's newspaper photo to a young, razor-thin night desk clerk. He looked at it and then to the two men behind her watching him, plain-clothes detectives Alfonso Leon and Sanzo Tarrega.
Outside were ten more undercover officers. Two each in cars watching the building's two street-level public entrances, two more in a car parked at the rear of the building near a service/delivery entrance. The other four were on the rooftop of an apartment building across the street, two with night-vision binoculars, the others were sharpshooters armed with .50 caliber Barrett sniper rifles fitted with night-vision scopes. The first pair watched the street below, the second, the window of room 408.
In all there were thirteen card-carrying members of Guàrdia Urbana, the Barcelona police, yet none of them were what they pretended to be. The six in the stakeout cars were special agents from GEO, Grupo Especial de Operaciones, Spain's elite counterterrorism corps; the others, those across the street on the roof and detectives Ortega, Leon and Tarrega were CIA-Madrid Station Chief Kellner's Barcelona "assets," CIA agents operating with the permission of the Barcelona police and Spanish intelligence.
"I asked you if this is Señor Marten." Detective Ortega pressed the clerk in Spanish once more, gesturing to Marten's newspaper photograph and trying to ignore the loud, pulsating Cuban jazz spilling from the hotel's Jamboree Club on the far side of the lobby.
"Sí," the young man nodded, his eyes darting nervously between Detective Ortega and the men behind her. "Sí."
"Another man is with him," she said definitively.
The clerk nodded again. Clearly he had no idea what this was about or what was going on.
Detective Tarrega moved in. "They are both in Señor Marten's room now?"
"Yes, I think," the clerk said nervously. "I can't swear to it, because I've been busy. But they would have to pass by the desk to leave, and I didn't see them. I've been here all night. The manager made me work a double shift. I didn't ask for the extra time, he just told me that was what I was doing."
"This other man. Who is he?" Detective Ortega pressed. "What is his name?"
"I don't know. He said he was Señor Marten's uncle. I let him into the room myself."
"What does he look like?"
"Like somebody's uncle," the clerk grinned sheepishly.
"Answer the question, please," Ortega demanded. "What does he look like?"
"Old—well not too old, but a little. Almost bald, with glasses."
"Bald?"
"Almost, yes."
Detective Tarrega glanced at Detective Leon and nodded toward the elevator, then looked back to the clerk. "Please give us a key to Marten's room."
"I—it's against hotel pol—" the clerk started to argue, then quickly decided against it. Anxiously he picked up a blank electronic key, programmed it, and handed it to Tarrega.
Abruptly Tarrega looked at Iuliana Ortega, "Cover here. We're going up."
• 3:12 A.M.
The fourth-floor elevator door slid open and Tarrega and Leon stepped out. Seconds later they had taken up positions at either end of the hallway where they could clearly see the door to room 408.
They knew 408 was Marten's room. Not because they had asked the clerk but because they had hacked into the hotel's reservation system before they arrived and confirmed it. Confirmed too that Marten had made no calls from 408's telephone or ordered anything from room service. To them and to the agents outside, and for all intents, Nicholas Marten and his balding "guest" were still in the room.
58
• U.S. ARMY CHINOOK HELICOPTER, TWENTY-ONE
MINUTES OUT OF MADRID EN ROUTE
TO BARCELONA, 3.l6 A.M.
"Bald?" Hap Daniels took the radio call over the roar of the Chinook's engines. Immediately he looked to Jake Lowe and National Security Adviser James Marshall buckled into seats across from him.
"Assets are reporting a man was let into Marten's room claiming to be his uncle. He was bald. Or almost bald. Unless the POTUS shaved his head, we've got the wrong man."
"Maybe he did shave his head," Lowe glanced at Marshall, then looked back to Daniels. "Keep the assets where they are. Bald or not, treat the situation as if he is POTUS."
"When do we get there?" Marshall asked.
"Wheels down at Barcelona police headquarters at 03:40 hours. Another ten minutes to the hotel."
• CHANTILLY, FRANCE, 3:25 A.M.
Victor was nestled in dark woods three-quarters of a mile from the Hippodrome de Chantilly alongside a turf practice track for the Chantilly racetrack's thoroughbreds called Coeur de la Forêt, the Heart of the Forest. It was still more than three and half hours before his targets would come by, yet even in the dark and damp of the woods Victor was comfortable and content.
They had flown him as promised first-class from Madrid to Paris. After that he'd done as instructed: taken a taxi from Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport to Gare du Nord Railway Station and from there a train to the town of Chantilly, where he'd checked into a room reserved for him at the Hotel Chantilly and where the M14 rifle and ammunition he would need—packed inside a locked golf bag with his name on the luggage tag and forwarded by rail from a hotel in Nice—were waiting. After that he'd taken a stroll in the woods, found the Coeur de la Forêt practice track and selected the spot where he was now and from where he would shoot when the jockeys worked out their thoroughbreds just after dawn.
• 3:27 A.M.
"Victor," Richard's soft and reassuring voice came through his headset.
"Yes, Richard."
"Are you in place?"
"Yes, Richard."
"Is everything alright? Are you warm enough? Do you
have everything you need?"
"Yes, Richard."
"Any questions?"
"No, Richard."
"Then, good luck."
"Thank you, Richard. Everything will be fine."
"I know that, Victor. I know that very well."
Victor heard Richard click off, and he settled back into the leaves. He was at ease, even happy. The dark forest and night sounds around him, even the dewy dampness that had settled on everything, felt natural and inviting, as if this was a part of the world—so far away and so very different from the desert scrub of Arizona where he had spent his entire life until they'd found him—where he truly belonged.
• 3:30 A.M.
A moth fluttered down and touched his face, and Victor reached up gently and brushed it away, careful not to harm it. He cared deeply for living things and had all his life, and all his life he had been chastised for it; too sensitive, too emotional, a crybaby, a mama's boy he'd been called, even by his own family. The names hurt deeply and suggested a weakness a male should not have, and as a teenager and later as an adult he had tried to deliberately bury them. Fistfights and trouble in school; later, bar fights and assault-and-battery charges, now and again minor jail time. He didn't care—he was as tough and masculine as any situation called for, as tough and masculine as he needed to be. It was a pretense Richard had picked up on after their first few telephone conversations.
In doing so he had made Victor realize there was nothing wrong with how he felt and that those same emotions were shared by hundreds, thousands, even millions of other men. Certainly it was hurtful when people close to him criticized him for it, but it was nothing compared to the things others were doing in the world. Richard was talking about people who saw little value in life at all except as it furthered their own ends. Terrorists, killers, whom the world paid lip-service to fighting but with few exceptions had little effect in stopping, even with the use of massive armies.
It was then Richard had asked if he would be interested in joining an underground movement of freedom fighters dedicated to protecting the American homeland by defeating these people and their organizations around the world, and he had agreed immediately.
The man he had killed coming off the train in Washington, Richard had told him several days beforehand, was a young baseball player from Central America. But he was also a member of a terrorist organization setting up sleeper cells in the corridor between Washington and New York and was leaving the country the next day to report to his handlers in Venezuela to arrange to bring more of their people and money into the U.S. The authorities knew about it but, because of their bureaucratic system with its layers of authority, had done nothing to stop him. It was necessary something be done before he left the country, and Victor had.
It was the same in Madrid when Richard had insisted that he walk through Atocha Station and picture the horror the terrorists had done there. It was an act of terror that should have, and could have, been stopped long before it happened.
Following the president both in Berlin and Madrid had been a simple exercise. Richard wanted him to see firsthand how easy it was for anyone to get close enough to kill him despite the heavy security. It was why he was here in Chantilly now, not just to test his shooting skills but also because the jockeys were part of a terrorist faction setting up in northern France. The idea was to take them down, little by little, one by one and by whatever means. This was war, and if no one else could fight it properly, people like Victor and Richard would.
So far Victor had played his part well. They valued his skills and dedication and told him so. To him that was most important of all.
• 3:35 A.M.
Victor put out a gloved hand and drew the M14 closer, letting it rest comfortably in the crook of his arm. He had only to rest and wait until the horsemen came by just before seven.
59
• BARCELONA, POLICE HEADQUARTERS, 3:40 A.M.
In a storm of flying dust and a deafening roar the U.S. Army Chinook helicopter touched down on the Guàrdia Urbana helipad. Instantly the engines shut down and the doors slid open. Seconds later Hap Daniels, his deputy Bill Strait, Jake Lowe, Dr. James Marshall, and four other Secret Service agents jumped out. Ducking beneath still churning rotors they went to three unmarked cars, their doors open, waiting on the edge of the tarmac. In an instant the men were inside, the doors slammed closed, and the cars screeched off.
• RIVOLI JARDÍN HOTEL, 3:45 A.M.
Music and traffic filled the streets as if it were midday. Revelers came and went through the hotel's two main entrances as if the Rivoli Jardín were hosting a rolling citywide party, the center of which was the music pulsating from the Jamboree Club at the end of the lobby.
So far none of the six Spanish GEO special agents posted in the unmarked cars outside had reported seeing either the man identified as Nicholas Marten or his balding "uncle" leave the building. Nor had the assets on the roof of the building across the street seen any activity inside the drawn curtains of a darkened room 408. The only illumination coming from it at all seemed to emanate from a dim hallway or bathroom light that had been on since they arrived. Nothing had changed either for the CIA assets acting as Barcelona police detectives Tarrega and Leon stationed in the corridor outside room 408. The same was true for the female asset calling herself Iuliana Ortega on watch in the lobby. Bottom line, if their two "men of interest" had been in the room when they arrived, they were still there now.
The Jamboree Club was smoky and sweltering, packed wall to wall with mostly young and sweaty dancers. In the last hours the Cuban jazz had given way to Brazilian bossa nova and then to Argentine jazz.
"Vino blanco otra vez, por favor." White wine again, please. "Bob," as President Harris had introduced himself to Demi, smiled at the young waitress and motioned for her to refill their drinks, then watched as she twisted away through the dancers toward the bar.
At 3:07 A.M. Demi had alerted them to the police downstairs. By 3:08 Marten had shoved his electronic notebook, tape recorder, toiletries, and other belongings into his traveling bag and thrown it over his shoulder. At 3:09 they were out the door and down the fire stairs at the end of the corridor. At 3:11 they entered the hotel lobby from a side hallway near the Jamboree Club and stopped.
"There," Demi said, pointing out Iuliana Ortega, the woman she had seen enter the hotel with the two men at the same time she had. She was sitting in an overstuffed lobby chair with a clear view of both the front entrance from the street and the elevators as if she were waiting for someone.
"Do you see the two men that were with her?" Bob asked.
"No."
The president looked at Marten. "They aren't police," he said quietly, then nodded toward the Jamboree Club. "It's as good a place as any."
At 3:13 they found a table and sat down. Quickly the waitress arrived and the president ordered white wine for the three of them. As the waitress left he took a napkin and made a note on it, then folded it and looked at Marten and Demi.
"By now they will have learned which room Mr. Marten is in and where they assume I am, since the clerk who let me in will have told them. The men will have gone up and be covering it, but they won't go in until the big guns arrive."
Marten leaned in, "There's a side entrance on the far side of the lobby, why don't we just go out that way?"
"There will be more outside," the president said quietly, "and watching all the entrances."
"How do you know all this?" Demi was looking at Bob carefully. Something was going on here and she didn't like it. "Who are you?"
"Bob," he said flatly.
Just then the waitress came back with their drinks. Marten paid her and she left. At the same time an exuberant voice came over the club's PA system announcing in Catalan: "Please welcome sizzling Basque singer-songwriter Fermín Murguruza!"
With that a spotlight came on and the handsome Murguruza bounded onstage singing. The audience went crazy. In seconds people were on their feet dancing as
if everything else in their lives had been forgotten. It was a moment the president used to slip Marten the napkin he had written on. Marten pulled it into his lap and unfolded it. On it the president had scrawled:
The woman is CIA, probably the men too—Secret Service imminent!
Marten felt his pulse quicken and looked to the president. As he did, he heard Demi's breathless exclamation.
"Oh, mon Dieu!" Oh, my God! she said in French.
Marten glanced at her. She was staring wide-eyed at Bob.
Quickly Harris's eyes found hers. "So now you know. Don't say a word."
"I won't," she breathed. She stared a second longer in disbelief, then turned uncertainly to Marten. "What's happening here? I don't understand."
"Listen to me," the president leaned in trying to make himself heard over the din of Fermín Murguruza's music. "Any minute now the special agent in charge of my Secret Service detail will arrive. He and his men will have flown from Madrid. They have no idea what I'm doing or why, and frankly, at this point they don't care. Their job is to protect me at all costs. Above all they will not want known what's going on or that I am anywhere near here. Which is most likely the reason they haven't evacuated the building or locked it down. It would draw too much attention, and that's the last thing any of them wants.