The Machiavelli Covenant (22 page)

The sound of the door opening at the far end of the car made Harris look up. Two of the armed, uniformed men who had boarded the train at Lleida entered and stood there surveying the passengers as the door closed behind them. Harris could see they were members of the CNP or Cuerpo Nacional de Policía, the Spanish federal police. Automatic weapons slung over their shoulders, they stood silently for a moment longer and then slowly started forward, the first CNP studying the passengers on the right side of the car; the second, the travelers to the left. Halfway down, the first CNP stopped and looked at a male passenger wearing a broad-brimmed hat, then asked to see his identification. The other CNP came over and watched as the man complied. The first CNP studied the man's ID, then handed it back, and the two continued on down the aisle.

Harris watched them come, then looked to his newspaper. There was little doubt they were looking for him, checking anyone who had even a remote resemblance to him or, in the case of the man with the hat, that they couldn't clearly identify.

They drew closer and he could feel his heart rate pick up, feel sweat bead up on his upper lip. He kept his head down, reading, hoping they would pass on by and go into the next car. Suddenly he saw a polished boot stop next to him.

"You," the CNP said in Spanish. "What is your name? Where do you live?"

His heart in his mouth, Harris looked up. The CNP
was not looking at him but at the man in the beret dozing next to him. Slowly the man raised the beret and looked up. By now the second CNP had joined the first. Harris felt like a lamb in the presence of two starving lions. All they had to do was turn their attention to him.

"What is your name? Where do you live?" the first CNP snapped again.

"Fernando Alejandro Ponce. I live at number sixty-two Carrer del Bruc in Barcelona," the beret said in Spanish. "I am an artist!" Suddenly he was getting indignant. "A painter! What do you know of art? What do you want with me anyway?"

"Identification," the first CNP said firmly. By now everyone in the car was looking their way.

The second CNP unslung his automatic rifle and slowly, angrily, Fernando Alejandro Ponce reached into his leather jacket and slid out some kind of identification card. He handed it to the first CNP.

Abruptly he looked to Harris. "Why don't you ask this man his name? And where he lives? Demand his identification? It's only fair! Go ahead, ask him!"

Jesus, God,
Harris thought and held his breath, waiting for the CNP to take up the man's challenge and do as he demanded. The CNP looked at Fernando Alejandro's ID card, then handed it back.

"Well, are you going to ask him?" Angrily Fernando Alejandro waved his ID card at Harris.

"Go back to sleep, painter," the CNP said. Then, with a glance at Harris, he turned, and with his companion, continued on down the car. A moment later they went out the door at the far end.

Alejandro's eyes followed them all the way, then shot back to Harris.
"¡Cabrones! ¿En todo Caso, ¿a quién
diablos están buscando?"
he snarled. Bastards! Who the hell are they looking for anyway?

"No tengo idea."
No idea. Harris shrugged.
"No tengo idea en absoluto."
No idea at all.

•
BARCELONA, 5:00 P.M.

Twenty minutes after the accident in the Gothic Quarter Nicholas Marten quietly checked out of the Hotel Regente Majestic, apologizing to the sympathetic desk clerk still on duty and saying his newspaper had abruptly changed his assignment. Graciously she canceled his credit card deposit and tore up the receipt. Five minutes afterward he was clear of the hotel and back on the street carrying his small traveling bag, never letting Demi know what he had done. Clearly there was no way to know if Salt and Pepper had been called to the restaurant by the waiter or if he had tracked Marten to the Regente or if someone from the hotel had alerted him and he'd tailed him from there, but by checking out as he had he'd left no clear trail for anyone to follow.

Nonetheless they knew he was in Barcelona, and with Salt and Pepper dead it was only a matter of time before they sent someone else to take his place. Someone who would be able to recognize him but whom he would not know. A stranger. The only advantage he had, if it was an advantage at all, was that now he knew who Salt and Pepper had been:
Klaus Melzer, 455 Ludwigstrasse, Munich, Germany,
a civil engineer.

Marten had known he was dead the minute he saw the savage dent in the truck's grillwork and the way his body was sprawled on the pavement in front of the vehicle. Feeling his carotid artery for a pulse had confirmed it. The rest, the pleading to the crowd to call an ambulance, the opening of his jacket to feel for a heartbeat, then the closing of his jacket and the second plea for an ambulance had all been show. He'd seen the slight bulge in the man's sport coat when he'd first bent over him. That was what he had wanted and what he had taken as he left, Salt and Pepper's wallet. Inside he'd found his German driver's license, credit cards and several business cards with his name and his firm's name:
Karlsruhe & Lahr, Bauingenieure, Brunnstrasse 24, Munich
.

•
5:44 P.M.

Marten checked into the Rivoli Jardín Hotel. He was still in the Gothic Quarter but several long blocks south of the Regente Majestic. Again, and with no other choice, he used his own name and identification to register. Ten minutes later he was unpacked and on his cell phone trying to get through to Peter Fadden in London. Instead of reaching the
Washington Post
writer he got his voice mail saying he was not available and to please leave word. Marten did, asking Fadden to call him as soon as he could. Then he clicked off and dialed the Hotel Regente Majestic asking for Demi's room. The phone rang through but there was no answer. He clicked off without leaving a message and with the gnawing feeling that maybe it had been a mistake to let her go. She'd tried to get rid of him before and was angry all over again after the episode at the Four Cats, and what
had he done but put her in a cab and send her off? It made no difference what she'd promised, all she had to do was check out of the hotel and there was every chance he'd never see her again. On top of that there was still that something about her, her manner, the sense he'd had before that she was strangely unconnected and that everything she was about had to do with something else. Whether that had to do with her missing sister, or whether the whole thing about her was made up and it was something else entirely, was impossible to tell. Whatever it was added to the discomfort he felt about her now.

Marten put down the phone and picked up Klaus Melzer's—Salt and Pepper's—driver's license. He turned it over in his hand, then looked again at his business card. Never mind that Marten had been handed off to him at the airport. Why would a forty-something German civil engineer be tailing him? It made no sense.

Unless—

Marten clicked on his phone and dialed the Munich number for Karlsruhe & Lahr listed on Melzer's business card. Maybe his identification—driver's license, credit cards, business cards—was false, maybe there was no Klaus Melzer or Karlsruhe & Lahr at all. Ten seconds later the second half of his conjecture fell apart:

"Karlsruhe und Lahr, guter nachmittag."
Karlsruhe and Lahr, good afternoon, a cheery female voice said.

Five seconds after that the first part went out the window too.

"Klaus Melzer, please," Marten said.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Melzer is out of the office until next week," the voice said in accented English. "Would you like to leave a message?"

"Do you know where he can be reached?"

"He's traveling, sir. May I have him return your call?"

"No, thank you. I'll get back to him."

Marten clicked off.

So there was a Klaus Melzer and there was a Karlsruhe & Lahr. That confirmation brought him back to his original thought—why had a middle-aged German civil engineer seemingly with a good job been following him? Why had the handoff from the young man to Melzer at the airport seemed so professional? Why had he run away when Marten was about to confront him? All he'd had to do was deny whatever Marten accused him of and that would have been that. There was nothing Marten could have done. But he hadn't and now Melzer was dead.

"Dammit," Marten said in frustration then clicked on his phone and tried Demi once more.

He let the phone ring until the hotel operator came on.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Picard is not answering."

"Thanks," Marten said and was about to hang up when he had one more thought. "Has Reverend Beck checked in yet? He was coming in from Malta."

"Let me check, sir." There was a brief pause then the operator came back on. "No, sir. Not yet."

"Thank you."

Marten clicked off then took a determined breath and crossed the room to plug in his cell phone to recharge it. If Demi wasn't answering and Beck hadn't checked in, then where was she? Again he had the disturbing thought that she had already left, maybe to meet Beck, or even Merriman Foxx. If she had, maybe she was not in Barcelona at all but somewhere else. If so, this time she would have covered her tracks well, making sure there would be no trail he could follow.

•
5:58 P.M.

President John Henry Harris watched the countryside turn to suburb and then to city as Altaria train #01138 neared Barcelona. In the distance he could see the sunlight glint off the Mediterranean Sea. In five minutes they were due to arrive at Barcelona-Sants Station. His plan was to transfer to the 6:25 Catalunya Express, which, barring difficulty, would get him into Gerona at 7:39. Once there, there would be no calling Rabbi David Aznar's house for directions because he knew his phones would be monitored by some piece of Hap Daniels's intelligence machinery and that meant he would have to find Rabbi David's house on his own. But he had come this far without being discovered, and he had to trust his luck would hold and he could go the rest of the way without incident.

•
6:08 P.M.

The Altaria pulled into Barcelona-Sants Station five minutes late. John Henry Harris stood with the other passengers as they collected their things.

He nodded to Fernando Alejandro Ponce, his leather-jacketed, beret-wearing artist seat-mate, then followed the others from the train. When he did his heart came up in his throat. Armed, uniformed police had blocked the exits and were checking the identification of everyone leaving the terminal. The lines felt like they were miles long. Harris's only thought was that Hap Daniels—
under the directive of the director of the Secret Service in Washington, under orders from the secretary of Homeland Security, under orders from Vice President Hamilton Rogers and the rest of Jake Lowe's "pals"—had put his foot to the accelerator. It meant this sort of thing would be going on all over Spain, if not all of Europe.

•
6:12 P.M.

President Harris stood in the ticket line for the Catalunya Express which was scheduled to depart for Gerona in thirteen minutes. He had purposely not bought a transfer ticket to Gerona in Madrid when he'd paid his fare for Barcelona, simply because he didn't want to alert anyone who might have recognized him, or who might later be questioned, his ticket seller in particular, as to his true destination. He now wished he had. The line to the ticket counter was twenty deep, and the police were walking up and down looking carefully at the people in line. And not just here, but at every ticket window.

•
6:19 P.M.

The line inched forward. People around him mumbled about what was going on. There was fear among them too, with memories of the horror that had gone on at Atocha Station on March 11, 2004, still achingly clear in their memories. Without doubt they were wary about the armed force around them. Many were half expecting a bomb to go off at any second.

•
6:22 P.M.

The line moved closer and Harris could see the ticket sellers in their cages checking the identification of every person buying a ticket, and CNP agents inside the ticket cages with them overseeing the process.

Slowly, easily, he stepped away from the line and walked toward the men's restroom. What he had to do was get out of the building and find some other way to Gerona. What that would be he didn't know, because he was certain every bus and train terminal would be under the same heavy surveillance.

Harris passed a news kiosk. Prominently displayed was
ADN,
apparently a major Barcelona newspaper. The front page had a photograph of himself leaving the presidential limousine, taken at some point the day before. The headline in Spanish read:

¡HARRIS HUYE DE AMENAZA TERRORISTA EN MADRID!
—HARRIS FLEES TERRORIST THREAT IN MADRID!

Head down he kept on, passing shops, restaurants, and an ungodly number of uniformed police. Finally he reached the men's restroom and went inside, passing a policeman stationed just inside the door. Half a dozen men stood at urinals. Harris went immediately into a stall and closed the door. What to do next? This was a nightmare beyond nightmares. He wished to hell he could wake up from it and find it had all been just that, a gruesome dream. But it wasn't and he knew it. He had to find a way out of the building, even though he knew nothing of Barcelona, let alone how to find some safe transportation to Gerona.