The Machiavelli Covenant (13 page)

He opened the folder and glanced at the page of handwritten notes he'd prepared in his hotel room as if he had taken them down during a phone conversation with Congresswoman Baker.

"Your biological weapons project in the Tenth Medical Brigade was called Program D, not B. Is that correct?"

"Yes." Foxx picked up the snifter and took a pull at his whiskey.

Marten made a notation on the page next to his notes and went on to the next. "You stated that the toxins you developed, including forty-five different strains of anthrax, and the bacteria that cause brucellosis, cholera, and plague and systems to deliver them, as well as a number of new and unaccounted-for experimental viruses—all had been accounted for and subsequently destroyed. That is correct as well?"

"Yes."

Foxx took another drink of whiskey. For the first time Marten noticed how extraordinarily long his fingers were in proportion to the size of his hands. At the same time also he took stock of the doctor's build. When he'd first seen him in the alley he'd seemed average, neither stocky nor slim, but in the bulky fisherman's sweater, if he was indeed in shape and muscular as Marten had previously thought, it was hard to tell. Either way it was
something he couldn't dwell on without drawing attention to what he was doing, so he went back to his questioning.

"To your knowledge has any further experimentation been done on human beings since 1993 when the president of South Africa declared that all of your biological weapons had been destroyed?"

Foxx suddenly put his glass down. "I answered that quite clearly before the committee," he said irritably. "No, no further testing was done. The toxins were destroyed, along with the information about how to create them."

"Thank you." Marten leaned over his file, taking his time to scribble a few more notes. Initially Foxx had greeted him cordially. It meant he had taken Marten's introduction of himself at face value and in all likelihood had not verified that he was with Congresswoman Baker's office. Yet now he was clearly becoming short-tempered, either by the questions themselves or more likely because of his ego. These were things he'd already been over in a closed congressional hearing and here he was standing in public going over the same material with some third-string messenger, one he was showing increasing contempt for. What he wanted was to have it over and done with once and for all.

It was just this display of temperament that told Marten he could be vulnerable if pushed, that with more direct questioning he might give something away he had not intended to. Marten knew too that if he was going to do it, he had to do so quickly because the doctor was clearly not going to give him much more of his time.

"I'm sorry, there are just a few more," Marten said apologetically.

"Then get to them." Foxx glared at him, then picked up his glass once more, his long fingers wrapped around it.

"Please let me explain, as perhaps I should have earlier," Marten said in the same contrite manner, "that some of these clarifications have been made necessary because of the death of one of the committee members after the hearings had closed, Congressman Michael Parsons of California. Representative Parsons, it seems, had left a memo for Congresswoman Baker that only recently surfaced. It had to do with a consultation he had with a Dr. Lorraine Stephenson, who, besides being a general practitioner, was also, I believe, a virologist. She also happened to be the personal physician of Congressman Parsons's wife, Caroline. Are you familiar with Dr. Stephenson?"

"No."

Marten glanced at his notes, then looked up. Now was the time to push, and hard. "That's curious because in Congressman Parsons's memo to Congresswoman Baker, he mentions that you and Dr. Stephenson had met privately more than once over the course of the hearings."

"I have never heard of a Dr. Stephenson. Nor do I have any idea what you're talking about," Foxx said tersely. "Now I think I've given the congresswoman quite enough of my time, Mr. Marten." He put down his snifter and started to turn from the bar.

"Doctor," Marten kept on, "Congressman Parsons's memo raised questions about the veracity of your testimony, particularly in the area of the unaccounted-for experimental viruses."

"What's that?" Foxx turned back, his face flushed with anger.

"I didn't mean to upset you. I'm only doing as instructed." Again Marten played the apologetic messenger. "Now that you know about the memo and since
Congressman Parsons is dead, Congresswoman Baker asked if you would state for the final transcript that everything you said under oath was, and to the best of your knowledge, still is, the whole truth."

Foxx picked up the snifter again, his eyes deadly cold. "Yes, Mr. Marten, for the final transcript, everything I said was and is the whole truth."

"The viruses included? That none had been used on a human being since 1993?"

Foxx's stare bore into him, both hands encircling the snifter, his thumbs protruding up and over the rim. "The viruses included."

"One last question," Marten said quietly. "Have you ever been know simply as 'the doctor'?"

Foxx finished his whiskey and looked to Marten. "Yes, by hundreds of people. Good night, Mr. Marten and please give Congresswoman Baker my best wishes." He set the empty snifter on the bar and walked off for his table.

"My God," Marten breathed. It had happened so quickly and inadvertently he'd almost missed it. Yet there it had been, shown to him as clearly as if he had asked to see it. Yes, Merriman Foxx had white hair. Yes, he was called "the doctor." But those two things taken alongside Marten's rather sorry attempt at getting hard information did not mark Foxx without a doubt as the doctor/white-haired man who had overseen, if not administered, the toxin that killed Caroline.

But the other thing did.

It was something he had forgotten completely until he had noticed the unusual length of Foxx's fingers as they circled his whiskey glass. It was what Caroline had told him over the phone when she'd first called him so fearfully in Manchester and asked him to come to Washington.

"I
didn't like him,"
she'd said about the white-haired man who'd come to the clinic where she'd been taken following the injection given her by Doctor Stephenson.
"Everything about him frightened me. The way he stared at me. The way he touched my face and my legs with his long, hideous, fingers."

Those fingers around the whiskey glass were only part of it. The rest had come when an angry Foxx had held his snifter in both hands with his thumbs protruding up and over the rim. It was then he'd seen it and remembered the whole of Caroline's description:
"The way he touched my face and my legs with his long, hideous, fingers; and that horrid thumb with its tiny balled cross."

A faded cross—two straight lines that intersected in the form of a cross with a tiny circle, a ball, at the tip of each of the four ends—had been tattooed on the tip of Merriman Foxx's left thumb.

Marten had almost missed it, but he hadn't. A tiny, faded tattooed cross described in passing by a terrified, dying woman. At the time it had been part of a jumble of information and had seemingly meant little. Now it meant everything.

It told him he had his man.

Marten reached into his pocket and clicked off the tape recorder. There was little doubt that it was Foxx who had overseen the murder of Caroline but there was nothing incriminating in the recorded conversation nor was a lone tattoo the kind of hard evidence Peter Fadden
would need to warrant an investigation by
The Washington Post
. Marten needed something concrete and definitive but getting it or even how to approach getting it would be hugely difficult, especially since Foxx had clearly closed the door on him and because there was no doubt the doctor would contact Congresswoman Baker's office to verify who he was. Once that happened he wouldn't get within a mile of him.

"Mr. Marten."

Marten looked up to see Demi Picard alone and coming toward him. It made him wonder what she was doing here. That she was with Beck was no surprise because she had told him the reverend was one of the subjects of a photo-essay book she was doing on political clergy. But that they were both here in Malta and at Foxx's dinner table so soon after Caroline's service in Washington was more than a little disturbing, especially now, with what he'd learned about Foxx.

"Ms. Picard." He started to smile. "How nice to—"

Her eyes suddenly narrowed and she cut him off in a sotto voce charged with anger. "Why are you here? In Malta? In this restaurant?"

"I was going to ask you the same thing."

"Dr. Foxx and Reverend Beck are old friends," she said defensively. "We were on our way to meet with a group of Western clergy visiting the Balkans and stopped overnight to visit."

"Presumably you know Reverend Beck quite well."

"Yes."

"Then maybe you can explain how an African-American minister can be the friend of an apartheid-era officer in the South African army, one who headed a notorious medical unit that developed secret biological
weapons designed to wipe out the black African population."

"You would have to ask Reverend Beck."

Marten stared at her. "What if I asked
you
about 'the witches'?"

"Don't," she warned.

"Don't?"

"I said, don't!"

"You're the one who brought it up," Marten said quickly. "You came to me, remember?"

"Demi," a familiar voice called from behind her. They turned to see Beck approaching. Cristina Vallone, Merriman Foxx's attractive female friend, was with him.

"I'm afraid Dr. Foxx has been called away. An urgent family matter," he said to them both, then directed the next at Demi. "He asked that I see you and Cristina back to the hotel."

Demi hesitated, and Marten could see she was troubled by the sudden turn of events. "Thank you," she said politely, "I have to use the loo. I will meet you upstairs."

"Of course." Beck looked to Marten as she went off toward the restrooms. "It was a pleasure to see you again, Mr. Marten, perhaps we shall do it another time soon."

"The pleasure would be mine, reverend."

Five minutes later Marten stood on Triq id-Dejqa watching the taillights of a taxi carrying Reverend Beck, Cristina, and Demi Picard disappear in a swirling fog. He glanced back down the dampened alley toward the Café Tripoli. The door was closed. Nothing stirred. He wondered how Foxx had left without him seeing him, or if he had left at all. In either case there was nothing he could do about it now. He took a breath and then stepped
off for the walk back to his hotel, Demi's words still clear as when she'd stopped at the bar on her way from the loo.

"I don't know who you really are or what you're doing here," she'd said forcefully with the same heated tone she used before. "But stay away from us before you ruin everything." With that she'd turned and gone up the stairs to where Cristina and the Reverend Beck waited.

Ruin everything
. What did that mean?

And now as he walked, making his way in damp night air toward the R.A.F. war memorial and after it the Upper Baracca Gardens on the way to his hotel, Demi's words faded in favor of what Reverend Beck had said as he bade him goodbye.

It was a pleasure to see you again, Mr. Marten, perhaps we shall do it another time soon
.

See you again—
again
.

It meant Beck knew who he was, and clearly remembered their meeting in Caroline's hospital room. At the time they'd met, the subject of Marten's profession had never come up, so it was possible that he might believe Marten did indeed work in Congresswoman Baker's office. Nonetheless it was a coincidence that would have been pointedly discussed with Foxx when he returned to the table. Couple that with the fact that Marten had not only brought up Caroline's name and that of Dr. Stephenson but that he'd said Mike Parsons had left a memo behind questioning the veracity of Foxx's testimony before the committee—Foxx would have put all those things together in a hurry, which was undoubtedly the reason the evening had ended so abruptly for everyone.

•
MADRID, 10:40 P.M.

The lights of nighttime Madrid flashed by. The Palacio de la Moncloa, residence of the Spanish prime minister, the dinner there with the newly elected prime minister and the twenty or so top Spanish industrialists he had invited to join them, over and done with and left behind.

Only four people rode in the presidential limousine, the Secret Service agent driving, a second agent riding shotgun beside him, and the two in the back; President John Henry Harris and his Secret Service special agent in charge, Hap Daniels. The interior communications system was turned off. Whatever the president and Daniels said was wholly private.

The motorcade itself had been reduced to the presidential limousine, two black Secret Service SUVs, and the black communications Hummer following behind. This time there was no ambulance, no staff van, no press pool van—just a small presidential motorcade going to a private residence in the wealthy La Moraleja suburb to share a brief drink with an old friend, Evan Byrd. Byrd was a former network news correspondent and press secretary to the late president Charles Cabot. For a time he had been President Harris's press secretary, before he retired to this Madrid suburb. After that it was back to the Hotel Ritz where the presidential entourage had taken over the entire fourth floor and the president looked forward to a sound night's sleep.