The Machiavelli Covenant (56 page)

Outside, the storm was abating; the thunder and lightning were fading in the distance, the rain had become little more than a drizzle. Inside, the church was silent; the families, the monks, Cristina, Luciana, and Reverend Beck long gone to their quarters. Demi had done the same, gone to change back into her street clothes and bide her time, waiting until she felt it was safe to leave her room and make her way undisturbed to the church nave.

C
ORNACCHI
, G
UARNIERI
, B
ENICHI
.

She read the names on the tombs and moved on.

R
IZZO
, C
ONTI
, V
ALLONE
.

She moved farther across the floor.

M
AZZETTI
, G
HINI.

"The name you are looking for is Ferrara," a voice came from the darkness.

Demi started and lifted her candle to peer into the darkness. "Who's there?"

For a moment she saw nothing and then Luciana stepped into the light offered by the candle. A hooded
monk was with her. Luciana no longer wore the gold dress of earlier. Instead, she was dressed in a black robe similar to those of the monks. Her false, hideously long nails were gone, but her dark eye makeup with the searing dramatic streaks that ran daggerlike from the corners of her eyes to the hollows of her ears remained. The effect of it all, the black robe, the makeup, her sudden presence here in the dark of the church in the company of a lone monk was, at best, unnerving.

"Come," she waved a hand, "the tomb is over here."

F
ERRARA.

"Move your candle closer, so you can see the name clearly."

Demi did.

"Say it. Say the name," Luciana insisted.

"Ferrara," Demi said.

"Your mother's name. Your family name."

"How do you know?" Demi said, startled by the revelation.

"It is why you are here. Why you befriended Reverend Beck and then Dr. Foxx. You wanted to know the secrets of Aldebaran. Why you met with the unfortunate Giacomo Gela, who then told you of Aradia Minor."

Demi moved the candle closer to Luciana and the monk. "I want to know what happened to my mother." She should have been afraid, but she wasn't. This was about the fate of her mother and nothing else.

Luciana smiled, "Show her."

The monk took the candle from Demi, then knelt beside the marking stone and removed it. Beneath was an ancient bronze chest. Twenty-seven dates were engraved on its lid. The earliest was 1637, the last was exactly eighteen years ago. The year her mother vanished.

"Your mother's name was Teresa," Luciana said.

"Yes."

"Remove the closure," Luciana said quietly.

The monk turned back the cover of the chest, then held the candle close. Demi could see rows of silver urns. Each one set into a special bronze square, each with a date engraved on it.

"The ashes of the honored dead. Like the great ox tonight. Like Cristina tomorrow."

"Cristina?" Demi was jolted.

"Tonight the children honored her as they honored the ox. She is joyous. As is her family. As are the children and the others."

"What are you telling me?" Slowly Demi's defiance began to fade. In its place came fear.

"The ritual was to honor those about to begin the great journey."

"These were honored?" Demi looked back to the urns.

"Yes."

"My mother?"

"Yes."

"These other urns are all women of my family?" Demi didn't understand.

"Count them."

Demi did, and then looked up. "There are twenty-eight. But only twenty-seven dates are engraved on the cover."

"Look at the date on the last urn."

"Why?"

"Look at it."

Demi did as Luciana commanded. When she did puzzlement crossed her face.

"Tomorrow."

"It is a date not yet engraved on the chest because as yet the urn holds no ashes," Luciana smiled slowly, her eyes filling with an immense darkness. "There is one woman in your family not yet counted."

"Who?"

"You."

•
11:30 P.M.

National Security Adviser James Marshall sat at a small folding table in the back of the command post tent. He was alone, isolated for privacy as he had asked, his headset connected to a secure phone.

On the same secure line were Vice President Hamilton Rogers; President John Henry Harris's chief of staff, Tom Curran; Secretary of State David Chaplin; Secretary of Defense Terrence Langdon; and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Chester Keaton, now aboard a CIA jet en route to Madrid.

"They caught two local boys supposedly lost in the tunnels. Still no sign of the president or Marten. The boys are being brought here for interrogation now. Nobody's really sure of what's going on." Marshall turned casually and looked around, making certain none of Bill Strait or Captain Diaz's communications team had wandered close by, then turned back and lowered his voice.

"We must assume what we have all along, that both men are either sealed in the tunnel outside Foxx's dirty lab, were in it when it exploded and are dead, or will be
brought to me immediately if somehow they're found alive, then sedated and flown directly to a waiting CIA plane. If we do otherwise, we'll start thinking like Jake Lowe, and that's no good. There can be no weak links. None.

"I remind you there is a long and powerful history here, one we have long embraced and sworn allegiance to. This is not the first time its resolve has been tested. It will not be the last. Our charge from the beginning has been to ensure the success of the operation at hand. Nothing has changed. Are we clear on that, gentlemen?"

"Absolutely clear, Jim,"
Vice President Rogers said quietly.
"Anyone disagree, say so now."

A unified silence followed.

"Good,"
the vice president said.
"Chet, you have an exact on Warsaw?"

"Fail-safe at 1530 tomorrow."
General Keaton had the same quiet, confident tone as the vice president.

"Good. Thank you, Dr. Marshall. You've handled it very well. Until tomorrow, gentlemen, good luck and Godspeed."

•
11:42 P.M.

The president, Marten, Hap, and Miguel huddled inside a dark turn of chimney thirty feet below where it met the upper tunnel.

Three times before they had stopped in the dark, breaths held, hearts pounding. The first had been when
several of the rescuers had climbed into the chimney from below after Amado and Hector had been caught. They'd heard them talking as they came, arguing whether the boys were alone as they'd said and that there was no one else. They must have concluded they'd told the truth because they'd climbed only a few minutes longer before turning back. The second had been to rest and give the president and Marten water from Miguel's camel pack and two health bars each from the limousine's emergency kit. The third had been when they'd heard someone coming down from above. Hap had instantly pushed the president and Marten back behind them, and then he and Miguel had waited with guns in hand as whoever it was continued down. Then a flashlight beam appeared around a turn in the rock. Sig Sauer up, Hap had been about to identify himself when José appeared. He'd been listening for them and scrambled down to meet them when he heard them come.

"These are the Americans I told you about," Miguel said when they were face to face. José had stared for the briefest moment, then looked past them down the chimney and asked for Amado and Hector.

"They are helping," Miguel told him in Spanish.

"Helping where?"

"They are with the police."

"The police?"

"Yes," said Miguel in Spanish. "Now it's your turn; please lead us back up."

Ten minutes later they neared the top and Hap stopped them again, asking Miguel to send José the rest of the way to see if the upper tunnel was clear and if it was safe to go the hundred yards down it to the chimney they had initially come down through and that they would use to climb out.

That had been three minutes earlier. So far he hadn't come back.

Until they stopped here conversation between them had been brief utterings, mostly commands or warnings. All of it spoken in voices barely above a whisper.

As they waited, Miguel realized something had to be addressed and soon—Hap's fear that the president had been, and might still be, afraid to trust him. It was a subject he appointed himself to resolve.

Immediately he slid back and huddled close to the president. "Cousin," he said, "Hap appreciates that under the circumstances you had no way to know who you could trust, himself included. It was the same for him as he started to learn things. It was very difficult because he wasn't even sure he could trust his own brothers in the Secret Service. He even got shot because of it."

"Shot?"

"Two bullets in the shoulder at Foxx's monastery office when he went there looking for you. We got him a doctor but he still hurts like hell. He should be in bed but instead he climbed all over and through these damned mountains to find you. So don't ever think you can't trust him."

The president turned from Miguel and looked to Hap. "You never said a word about getting shot."

"Wasn't much to say."

"You got yourself into a real mess over me."

"It's my job description."

The president smiled. "Thank you."

"Yes, sir."

The president's response—the tease, the smile, the thank-you, was everything. It meant the bond, the friendship, and the hugely necessary trust between the president and his chief protector were once again in place.

"There's something you don't know, Hap," the president said and the personal moment faded. "The vice president, secretary of defense, chief of staff, all those people present that night at Evan Byrd's house in Madrid, are planning to have the president of France and the chancellor of Germany assassinated at the Warsaw meeting. It's part of a much bigger conspiracy, one that Merriman Foxx was involved in. There has been no way for me to alert anyone without giving away my position. And you can't do it either, not now."

Hap leaned forward, "It's not Monday yet, Mr. President. My plan is to get you out of here and then down the mountain as fast as we can, to Miguel's cousin's house where the limo is. Then we're gone, out of this hot surveillance area, hopefully as far as the French border by first light. At that point we can take the chance and inform the French and German governments about Warsaw. To do that we've got to deal with what comes next.

"When they break Hector and Amado, and they will," Hap glanced at Miguel. "We had to do something, Miguel, I'm sorry." He looked back to the president. "Once they break them, they'll know for certain you're down here and alive. It won't make any difference if they find out I'm with you or not. They'll come through all these tunnels loaded for bear. Outside will be the same. More bodies brought in, more equipment. In an hour there'll be a traffic jam of air and satellite surveillance like no one on this planet has ever seen. Every road for fifty miles around will be blocked."

"And you still think we can get out."

"We have a little time before they'll know for certain where you are and the full assault begins. Still," he cautioned, "there's a major force out there right now. The thing is, they're scattered all over and concentrating on
what's going on underground. With care and luck and José knowing the way, in the dark we might have a chance to slip past them. Except for one thing."

"What do you mean?"

"By now they'll have a big surveillance satellite right over us. The digital-photo aspect won't be of much use at night, but the thermal imaging will. As soon as we're out of these tunnels and on the surface we become a heat source they will immediately identify."

"Then what makes you think we can get away at all?"

"It's more hope than think, Mr. President, but with these—" Hap pulled one of the small, folded survival blankets from his jacket—"open it up and you've got a thin blanket the size of a small tent. One side is Mylar, cut a couple of eyeholes, put it over your head and belt it around you, with luck it should reflect back 'cold' to the bird's thermal sensor. If we stay low to the ground and find brush and hillsides with trees to give us cover, we might just get away with it."

Miguel grinned. "You are a very smart fellow."

"Only if it works."

The president glanced at Marten and then looked to Miguel. "How far is the Aragon resort overland from where we are?"

"Ten, twelve miles. There are trails but mostly it's rough country."

"Can we reach it on foot by daybreak?"

"Maybe. José would know how to do it."

"The Aragon resort?" Hap was incredulous. "Over mountain trails in the dark. It would take four or five hours, maybe more. Even if these blankets do work, that's too much time. There will be too many people out there, too much equipment. The chances of us getting even halfway there without being caught don't exist."