"To all of us this has been a thunderclap of surprise, horror, and revulsion. For myself and for the chancellor of Germany and the president of France it is also a personal and deeply felt wound of betrayal by close and long-trusted friends.
"Bad news does not travel well. Truth of this nature is both painful and ugly, but the same truth hidden away is far worse. In the coming days and weeks we will know more, and you will be kept informed. In the meantime we can only thank providence that we were fortunate enough to have found the beast and killed it before it began its slaughter.
"We need only look around us here at Auschwitz to be reminded of the terrible, harrowing price of fanaticism. We owe it to those who perished here, to ourselves, to our children and theirs, to make this cancer a disease of the past. It is something that together we can do.
"Thank you and good afternoon."
The president stared out at the audience for several seconds before turning to take the handshakes of Anna Bohlen of Germany and Jacques Géroux of France and then of the president of Poland, Roman Janicki. And then of the leaders of the NATO countries who came down one by one to greet him and say a few words and to solemnly take his hand.
For the longest moment Marten, like nearly everyone else—the guests, the security personnel, the media—stood silent. The president's speech had been no self-serving discourse, no political glad hand; he had spoken the truth as he had promised Marten he would. How and when and where the fallout would come—a firestorm of protest and outrage in the Middle East and in Muslim enclaves around the world, charges the president was mentally unbalanced and incapable of serving, furious denials and counterattacks by those arrested or revealed as they rallied their people behind them—was impossible to say. But it would come as the president had known it would from the beginning.
"I'm going to say some things that diplomatically might be better left unsaid," he had told Marten, "all the while knowing the reaction around the world might and probably will be ugly. But I'm going to say them anyway because I think we've reached a point in time where the people elected to serve need to tell the truth to the people who elected them, whether they like what they hear or not. None of us anywhere can afford to go on with politics as usual."
The president had asked Marten to come to supply moral support, but he hadn't needed it. He had his own clear vision of who he was and of the grave responsibility of his office. His "friends" had made him president because he had never made an enemy of anyone. It made them think he was soft and they could mold him any way they wished. The trouble was, they'd misjudged him greatly.
Marten took one last glance at the president and the leaders surrounding him. That was his world, where he belonged. It was time Marten got back to his. He was turning, starting to walk away, when he heard a familiar voice call his name. He looked up and saw Hap Daniels coming toward him.
"We're leaving. Marine One, wheels up from here in ten minutes," he said. "Air Force One, wheels up from Krakow in fifty. The president asked us to file a flight plan through Manchester. Drop you off there," he smiled, "kind of like a personal shuttle."
Marten grinned. "I've already booked a commercial flight, Hap. Tell the president thanks but I don't need the publicity. He'll know what I'm talking about. Tell him maybe sometime we can all sit down someplace for a steak and a beer. You and him and me and Miguel. The boys too, José especially."
"Be careful, he just might do it."
Marten smiled, then extended his hand. "I'll be waiting."
They shook hands and then Hap was called away. Marten watched him go, then turned and headed for the gate. A minute later he passed between the columns and looked back at the ancient wrought-iron sign above it.
Arbeit Macht Frei, Work Shall Make You Free.
The slogan had been the Nazis' idea of graveyard humor, yet aside from them, no one who saw it smiled much. But in his exhausted state the words crept through and touched Marten in an entirely unintended way, making him smile inwardly and shake his head at the irony of it.
It made him wonder if he still had a job.
EPILOGUE
PART ONE
• MANCHESTER, ENGLAND. THE BANFIELD COUNTRY
ESTATE, HALIFAX ROAD. MONDAY, JUNE 12, 8:40 A.M.
It had been two months to the day when Marten had told Hap good-bye and walked out of Auschwitz. If he'd been worried about keeping his job at Fitzsimmons and Justice, he needn't have bothered. By the time he had returned to Manchester that evening he had a half-dozen very recent calls backed up on his voice mail. Four were from his manager Ian Graff asking him to call him the moment he got in. The others were, respectively, from Robert Fitzsimmons and Horace Justice. Fitzsimmons he knew well from the workplace. Horace Justice, the founder of the company, eighty-seven years old and retired and living in the south of France, he'd never met. Still, he had messages from all three wishing him well and hoping he would be at work first thing the next morning.
The primary reason?
The president, it seemed, had placed direct calls to each man from Air Force One telling them how grateful he was for Marten's personal assistance during the last days and trusting that his unreported absence wouldn't be held against him. Indeed it wasn't. He was put immediately and full-time back onto the Banfield job, which between the arguments and changes of mind between Mr. and Mrs. Banfield, seemed to have been filled with more minefields than anything he'd encountered with the president. Still, he'd eagerly jumped back in and pressed on. Now, finally and at last, things were coming together. The grading had been done, the irrigation was in, the planting was beginning, and the Ban-fields were at peace. Chiefly because Mrs. Banfield was happily pregnant with twins and hence had shifted her time, opinions, and energy to preparing the house for their arrival. Happily too, Mr. Banfield, when he wasn't advancing his career as a professional soccer star, followed her indoors. All of which left Marten to supervise the remainder of the landscape work. Which was what he did while the world hung upside down in massive reaction to the president's speech.
The president had been right when he'd said things "might and probably will be ugly." They were from the outset and still were.
The United States, Washington in particular, was an on-going typhoon of round-the-clock media chaos. Political talk shows owned television, radio, magazines, and newspapers. The Internet was overrun with bloggers saying the president had gone off the deep end and was a nutcase, that he should be hospitalized or impeached or both. Conspiracy theorists everywhere were rife with their trademark "I told you so." Right, left, and center everyone wanted to know what this mysterious "Covenant" was and who belonged to it; what religion the president had been referring to; who had been burned to death in ceremonial rituals; how could the very distinguished members of the New World Institute have been involved with anything like the accusations he had made; where was the proof of any of it?
In the Middle East and throughout Muslim enclaves in Europe and the Pacific, things were no different. People and governments wanted details about this "genocide." In which countries and when was it to have taken place? How many deaths would have resulted? Who was to have occupied their lands? What else would've happened? What was the reasoning, the goal behind it? What had the members of this organization hoped to gain? Was the threat of it truly over? And finally, was this another arrogant move by an American president designed to provoke untold fear in the Islamic world, countering terrorist strikes against the U.S., Europe, and the Pacific with the nightmare threat of all-out annihilation?
Without answers, Islam responded quickly. Massive, violent anti-American and anti-Europe demonstrations took place across the Middle East. Equally violent street clashes and car burnings broke out across France, perpetrated by young, mostly poor Muslims whipped into rage by radical clerics for what authorities termed "dubious purpose." Less violent demonstrations took place in England, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Demands were made in the United Nations for further explanation and specif
ic details. None of which were forthcoming because, as of yet, no particulars of Foxx's master plan had been found.
Nor had the interrogations of Vice President Hamilton Rogers, Secretary of State David Chaplin, Secretary of Defense Terrence Langdon, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Chester Keaton, and White House Chief of Staff Tom Curran—who proclaimed their innocence after being returned to Washington and arraigned by a federal magistrate and were now being held in the custody of United States marshals at Andrews Air Force Base—turned up new information.
Nor had the interrogations of the members of the New World Institute present at the Aragon meeting—now arrested and being held at various locations around the world, charged with suspicion of membership in a terrorist organization and conspiracy to commit mass murder—revealed facts not already known.
Nor had anything official come from the Secret Service ECSAP unit (Electronic Crimes Special Agent Program) charged with examining the hard drives Hap and the president had taken from the master computer at the Aragon church. Understandably this was a snail's-pace investigation and being done with extreme care, not only for the recovery of information contained within but because whatever was there might well be crucial evidence that would be used in federal court.
Still, and quietly, international security agencies were working in close cooperation to piece together information that would lead to a clear trail of conspiracy. Particularly targeted were political parties in France and Germany where, as Jake Lowe had told the president in Evan Byrd's home in Madrid, "before, our people were not yet in place. Now they are. We have been assured of this by friends of trust. Friends who are in a position to know."
"What friends?" the president had shot back. "Who are you talking about?"
Those "friends" were precisely the people being sought worldwide. In Germany, a minor political party called Das Demokratische Bündnis, the Democratic Alliance, the party of Marten's Salt and Pepper Barcelona shadow, the civil engineer Klaus Melzer, was covertly targeted, its entire membership put under heavy surveillance that included electronic monitoring of phone calls, e-mails, bank accounts, as well as travel records. It was an investigation that quickly turned up a sister organization in France: Nouveau Français Libre, the New Free French party, with headquarters in Lyon, and branches as far north as Calais on the English Channel, and south, to Marseilles on the Mediterranean.
The great explosion and fire in the church and in the miles of old mining tunnels leading beneath and away from the Aragon resort to an ancient church on the far side of the mountains called La Iglesia dentro de la Montaña, the Church within the Mountain, and nearly all the way to the monastery at Montserrat, still burned.
Authorities and mine experts had agreed it would be weeks if not months longer before it burned itself out and cooled enough to be safe for crews to explore. The source of the explosions, like the one barely a day earlier near the monastery at Montserrat, had been attributed to a decades-old buildup of deadly methane gas in the long-sealed tunnels. It was a declaration that immediately raised eyebrows and brought up the question of how anyone could have purposely planned this kind of massive destruction.
Yet, for all of it, there was evidence. The president and Nicholas Marten had been deposed in secret on what they had seen in the tunnels and laboratories and in the church and elsewhere. So had Demi Picard, Hap Daniels, Miguel Balius, and the Spanish teenagers José, Hector, and Amado. Others deposed—USSS Special Agent Bill Strait, U.S. Marine Corps helicopter pilot Major George Herman "Woody" Woods and the medical team and air crew aboard the Chinook—confirmed the death of National Security Adviser Dr. James Marshall, publicly pronounced a tragic accident, as suicide. The death of political adviser Jake Lowe was presented as a possible homicide, especially after secret testimony by Spanish CNP Captain Belinda Diaz and further questioning of Agent Strait concerning Dr. Marshall's reporting of the incident.
At the same time constitutional lawyers for the vice president, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense and the others—despite the posturing of outrage and claims of complete innocence—were already trying to plead the case down from high treason to "threats against the president."
All of which gave the president hope that the truth he had told in his address at Auschwitz was not the political suicide many had thought but simply the right thing to do by a man who believed in telling the people "what was what" and "who was who" because he felt that at this fragile point in history there was no other way to do it.
Careful to keep his distance and his name and face from public view, Marten kept his eyes on the news and his attention on the Banfield project.
Then, on Friday morning, May 21st, Robert Fitzsimmons summoned him to his office and asked him to fly to London to meet with a special client, a prominent London surgeon named Dr. Norbert Holmgren, who lived just off Hyde Park and who had a large estate in the Manchester countryside where he wanted to make considerable landscape modifications.
Dr. Holmgren was not at home when Marten arrived but he was shown into the sitting room anyway. When he entered he found two people waiting, Hap Daniels and President Harris, who was quietly in London for private talks with British prime minister Jack Randolph. Marten's immediate response was to grin broadly and to joyfully bear-hug each man in turn. Then, as quickly, a caution bell rang through him and he pulled back.
"Now what?" he asked.
The "now what" was top secret information the president had wanted to share with him.
"Aradia Minor," the president had said, explaining Demi had been debriefed by the FBI in Paris and had told of her decades-long search for her mother and what she had learned about the ancient and secretive coven of Italian female witches called Aradia, which used as its identifying mark the balled cross of Aldebaran, and what Giacomo Gela had revealed about the more secretive order hidden within it called Aradia Minor. An order referred to in writing simply as the letter A followed by the letter M and written in a combination of Hebrew and Greek alphabets as " μ" It was Aradia Minor, a deeply religious cult of true believers that over the centuries had been manipulated into providing the Covenant with their sacrificial "witches."
Later Demi had told of her captivity and of the terrible, torturous videos they had played over and over of her mother's death by fire. Lastly she had told of what she had seen underground when they had brought her via the monorail to the church: the empty experimental medical chambers, the long-abandoned barrackslike rooms, and finally, beneath the church itself and at the end of the monorail track, the large crematory oven.
"That's how Foxx got rid of the bodies." Marten felt the hair stand up on his neck as he said it.
"Yes," the president said. "Look at this," he nodded to Hap who opened a laptop.
"The Secret Service is still working with the hard drives, but already some information has been salvaged. Take a look."
Marten looked at the computer screen. What he saw was a series of still photographs taken in a room in one of Montserrat's tall buildings that overlooked the large plaza in front of the basilica. Apparently taken by Foxx with a remote camera, they showed a small office-sized room, a telescope, and a video recorder. Next came photos taken with a telescopic lens, as if through the telescope itself, and showing a number of close-ups of people in the plaza.
"It was how he selected his 'patients,'" the president said, "a never-ending supply. It was the 'general populace' he was looking for. Photographed handwritten notes suggest he pointed out those he'd selected to the monks, who took it from there. Not right away, but following the victims back to wherever they'd come from and later kidnapping them."
"The bastard thought everything through," Marten said angrily, and looked at them both. "Nothing on his plan for the Middle East or notes on his experiments?"
"No, at least not yet."
"What about Beck and Luciana?"
"Not a trace. They either got away or were trapped when the church went up. They are still on the lis
t of those to be apprehended."
"So that's it? Until more of what the hard drives hold are uncovered or what the ongoing investigations might reveal."
"Sort of," Hap said quietly and looked to the president.
"A simple listing in a separate journal that was kept by my friend and adviser Jake Lowe," the president said, then he hesitated and Marten could see a wave of emotion come over him.
"What is it?"
"You knew my wife was Jewish."
"Yes."
"You knew too that she died of brain cancer in the weeks just before the presidential election."
"Yes."
"They wanted the Jewish vote. They didn't want a Jew in the White House. They thought if she died I would gain a huge boost in the polls not just in sympathy from the Jews but from the general public."
Again Marten felt the hair rise up on his neck. "Foxx killed her with something that mimicked brain cancer."
"Yes," the president nodded and then trembled and tried to blink the tears from his eyes. "It seems," he said with great difficulty, "we both lost someone we loved immeasurably."
Marten went to the president and embraced him, and for the longest moment the two men stood there in each other's arms. Each knowing to his soul what the other was feeling.
"Mr. President, we have to go," Hap said finally.
"I know," he said, "I know."
The men looked at each other and the president smiled. "When this all calms down you'll come to my ranch in California and we'll have that steak and beer. Everyone. You, Hap, Demi, Miguel, and the boys."
Marten grinned, "Hap told you."
Now it was Hap's turn. "I started to but he told me first."
Marten put out his hand. "Good luck, Mr. President."
The president took it, then hugged him once more and stepped back. "Good luck to you too, Cousin, and God bless."