The Machiavelli Covenant (24 page)

"What are you looking at?" he said.

"No hablo English good," the man smiled.

"Me," Marten pointed to his face, "you recognize me? I am familiar to you?" If this man was trouble and taking him somewhere other than to the cathedral he wanted it to come out now, so he could do something about it.

"Sí," the man said, suddenly understanding, "Sí." Immediately his hand slid to the seat beside him and he picked up a copy of an evening newspaper. It was folded back and open to an interior page.

"You Samaritan. You Samaritan."

"What? What are you talking about?" Marten was thrown off.

The man pushed the paper over the seat. Marten took it and looked at it. What he saw was a large photo of himself bent over the sprawled body of his Salt and Pepper man, Klaus Melzer, with the truck that had hit him in the background.

"Buen Samaritano sin sentido
—
el hombre de la calle ya estaba muerto,"
the caption read. Marten didn't understand the Spanish but he got the gist of it—he was a good Samaritan for no reason, the man in the street was already dead.

"Sí, Samaritano," Marten handed the paper back, swearing to himself as he did. Obviously someone in the crowd had taken a picture and sold it to the newspaper. They didn't have his name and there wasn't a story, so at least it wasn't about his having pilfered the dead man's wallet. Still, he didn't like it. It was bad enough he'd had to register at his hotel under his own name, but with his picture spread over the city like that it would make him all that much easier to find.

Abruptly the taxi sped up, traveled a half block, then turned down another street, moving deeper into the Gothic Quarter, which he now realized was not just a tourist area, but a sprawling ancient neighborhood where narrow streets emptied into other narrow streets and then into squares. It was a maze one could easily become lost in, something that might have happened to Klaus Melzer, a German, unfamiliar with the city, doing nothing more than trying to get away from a man pursuing him and running directly into the path of an oncoming truck. It was something that again made him wonder why Foxx, or whoever had hired the salt-and-pepper civil engineer, had picked him over a local and why Melzer had agreed to do it.

Just then the taxi slowed and stopped, its driver pointing toward a large square. Hotels and shops lined one side, while on the other stood a massive, ornate stone edifice with a complex series of lighted spires and bell towers that reached high into the evening sky.

"The cathedral, señor," the cab driver said.
"Catedral de Barcelona."

•
8:20 P.M.

Marten crossed the square to join a group of English tourists as they walked up a series of stone steps and entered the cathedral.

The atmosphere inside the fifteenth-century building's vast and ornate interior was hushed, its muted lighting broken by the flickering of hundreds of votive candles resting on tables on either side of the nave.

Marten lingered as the group moved forward, his eyes scanning the room for Demi or Beck or the woman in black. Here and there people sat in silent prayer. Others walked respectfully around, gazing up at the architecture. At the far end of the nave was a high, elaborate altar. Above it towered Gothic arches that rose toward a ceiling he guessed was eighty feet high.

A raspy, echoing cough from someone near his sleeve brought him back to the purpose at hand and he moved forward, carefully, slowly. If Demi and her companions were there, he didn't see them. He kept walking. Still nothing. Suddenly, he wondered if Beck or Demi had
said something to the hotel doorman as they left, and the man had purposely sent him on a wild goose chase and in reality they had gone somewhere else and not come here at all. It was enough to trigger a sense that he should go back to the hotel now and—suddenly he stopped. There they were, the three of them, standing on the far side of the nave, talking with a priest.

Marten crossed it cautiously, using tourists as screens, moving closer to where they were, praying they wouldn't suddenly turn and see him.

He was almost within hearing distance when the priest gestured off, and together the four moved in that direction. Marten followed.

A moment later he was in an inner hallway that ran alongside a large interior garden. Ahead he saw the priest lead the three around a corner and down still another hallway. Again, Marten followed.

Thirty paces and he was there, cautiously entering a chapel of some kind. As he did he saw the priest usher Demi, Beck and the woman in black through an ornate door near the rear. Seconds later the door closed behind them. Immediately Marten went to it and tried its wrought-iron handle. It didn't move. The door was locked.

Now what? Marten turned. An elderly priest stood not ten feet away looking at him.

"I was hoping to find a restroom," Marten said innocently.

"That door leads to the vestry," the priest replied in heavily accented English.

"The vestry?"

"Yes, señor."

"Is it always locked?"

"Except in the hour before and after services."

"I see."

"You will find a restroom that way," the old man gestured toward a hallway behind them.

"Thank you," Marten said, and with no choice, left.

•
8:45 P.M.

Five minutes later he'd walked through as much of the main church as he could, trying to see where they might have gone. Other doors were either locked or opened onto corridors that led to still more corridors, but none seemed to take him in the direction of the chapel where they had been.

He retraced his steps and went out through the main entrance, then walked around the cathedral to the far side where he guessed the chapel was, looking for a doorway Demi and her friends might have come out of. There was none. A hike around the rest of the massive building's exterior revealed only entrances that were darkened and closed and locked. That left only the main entrance, where he'd only moments before come out. That was where he went, blending in among the tourists and passersby on the square in front of the cathedral, to take a table at an outdoor café across from it where he had a clear view of the entryway. He ordered a bottle of mineral water and later a cup of coffee. An hour passed and they still hadn't come out. At ten the doors closed for the night. Frustrated, angry with himself for losing them, Marten got up and left.

•
RIVOLI JARDÍN HOTEL, 10:20 P.M.

Marten came off the noisy street jammed with pedestrians and bumper-to-bumper traffic and into the relative quiet of the hotel lobby. Immediately he crossed to the front desk to ask for calls or messages.

"Neither, señor," the clerk said politely.

"Did anyone come in asking for me?"

"No, señor."

"Thank you," Marten nodded then crossed to the elevator that would take him to his room on the fourth floor. A push of a button, the door opened, and he stepped into the empty car. Another push of a button, the door closed, and the elevator started up.

That he had no calls or messages and that no one had come looking for him was a distinct relief. It meant whoever had sent Salt and Pepper had yet to find a replacement who might have tracked him to the Rivoli Jardín. Demi, Peter Fadden, and Ian Graff at Fitzsimmons and Justice in Manchester had his cell phone number and would have gotten in touch with him that way. So for the moment, at least, he had a chance to breathe. No one knew where he was.

Demi.

His thoughts were suddenly on her and what she was doing or not doing. Obviously she was back in Beck's good graces or she wouldn't have gone off with him as she did. Where either of them was now and who the woman in black was, was anyone's guess. The fact was Demi remained a conundrum. It was true she had provided him
with considerable information, especially as it related to the witches, the thumb tattoos, and the sign of Aldebaran, and that she had come to Barcelona hoping once again to meet with Merriman Foxx. On the other hand, and even though they were more or less after the same thing, she clearly wanted nothing to do with him. It made him think again of his impression of her when they had had lunch at the Four Cats; that as focused as she seemed, everything she was about seemed to have to do with something other than what was at hand. Whether that something was her missing sister, or if that story was even true, he had no way to know. What he did know was that a whole lot about her troubled him. It was as simple as that.

The elevator stopped at the fourth floor, the door opened and Marten stepped out into a deserted corridor. Twenty seconds later he reached the door to his room and swiped the coded electronic key through the lock. The tiny light turned from red to green and the lock clicked open. Bone weary, wanting only to shower and go to bed, he went in, turned on the hallway light, then closed the door behind him and locked it. To his left was the bathroom. Beyond it was the room itself. Dark with only the ambient glow from the street giving it any illumination at all. He walked just past the bathroom door and started to reach for the light switch to the room.

"Please don't turn the light on, Mr. Marten," a male voice sprang from the darkness of the room.

"Christ!" Marten felt ice run down his spine. Instantly he looked behind him. It would be impossible to get to the door, unlock it, then open it and get out before whoever was in the room had him. His heart pounding, he turned back, peering into the darkened room in front of him.

"Who the hell are you? What do you want?"

"I know you are alone. I watched you cross the street to the hotel from the window." The voice was calm, even quiet. This wasn't someone like the baggy-jacketed kid who had tailed him from Valletta to Barcelona or the German civil servant who had fled the instant he was challenged and then panicked and ran into the path of a truck.

"I said who the hell are you? What do you want?" Marten had no way to know if the man was alone or if there were others with him. Or if he was there to kill him or simply take him to Merriman Foxx.

Suddenly there was movement and he could see a lone male figure come toward him in the dark. In a swift move Marten undid his belt buckle and ripped the belt from his pants, wrapping it around his hand as a makeshift weapon.

"You won't need that, Mr. Marten."

Abruptly his "guest" stepped from the dark and into the spill of the hallway light. As he did, Marten's breath went out of him. The man who stood there was John Henry Harris, the president of the United States.

"I need your help," he said.

Nicholas Marten pulled the room curtains and then switched on a small lamp and turned to face the president, who had taken a chair and now sat facing him. If he had been startled before, he was all the more so now. The man he had met moments before was probably the most recognizable person in the world, but in an instant he looked entirely different, almost unrecognizable. His full head of hair was gone, showing a nearly bald pate,
and he wore glasses. It made him seem older, even slimmer, or as he had thought, just "different."

"A toupee, Mr. Marten. They make them very well these days," the president said. "I've worn one for years. Only my personal barber knows about it. The glasses are clear, an addition picked up in a store in Madrid. A simple stage prop that helps with the overall appearance."

"I don't understand, sir. Any of it. Even how you found me or why you wanted to. You're supposed to be in—"

"An undisclosed location because of a terrorist threat, I know. Well, I am in an undisclosed location, at least for the moment." The president reached to a side table and picked up the copy of
La Vanguardia
he had taken from the rest room in the train station. A page was folded back and he handed it to Marten.

A quick glance told Marten everything. On it was the photograph of himself with the body of his Salt and Pepper man hit and killed by the truck. The same photograph the cabdriver had shown him earlier.

"I saw your picture, Mr. Marten. I hired a young woman to help me find you. I was alone and desperately in need of a place to go, and for the moment, at least, you have provided it. Serendipity or kismet, I think it's called."

Marten was still wholly puzzled. "I'm sorry, but I still don't understand."

"The young woman found where you were registered. It wasn't that far from where I was, so we walked here. I was let into your room by a generous desk clerk after I told him I was your uncle and had planned to meet you earlier but that my plane was late in arriving. He was skeptical but a few euros convinced him."

"That's not what I mean. You are the president of the United States. How could you be on your own like this,
and even if you were why come to me when you could have called anyone?"

"That's just it, Mr. Marten, I couldn't have called anyone. And I mean anyone." The president fixed Marten with a look that told him how truly desperate his situation had been and still was. "I remembered you from our brief meeting at University Hospital in Washington. Caroline Parsons had just died and very nearly in your arms. You asked if you might have a moment alone with her. You remember?"

"Of course."