The Machiavelli Covenant (64 page)

Wordless, the monks took Demi toward the center of the stage, then stopped as slowly a great balled cross of Aldebaran rose up before them. Immediately the monks secured her feet to its base, then pulled a strap tight around her throat and lifted her arms outward, binding them to the crossbars. In seconds she had become a living crucifix fastened to a pagan icon.

Cristina looked over at her and smiled. "The ox waits."

"No."

"Yes."

At that moment a monk appeared through the fog and approached Cristina. He handed her a silver goblet filled with red wine. She took it, and smiled, and gently opened her mouth. As she did the monk laid a round wafer on her tongue. She lifted the goblet and drank, swallowing the wafer. This, Demi knew, was part of the ceremony. She also knew she had witnessed a false Eucharist. Christ and the Last Supper were not part of this rite. Nor was the wafer symbolic of his body nor the wine of his blood. The night before, the ox had stood calmly and peacefully as it was consumed by fire, no fear or pain in its eyes. Clearly it had been given some
drug, and Demi was certain Cristina had been given one now. But she knew too that while the drugged beast had died peacefully, it had all been for show. For the children and the others to see and to believe Cristina would have that same peaceful journey. But it was a lie; she had seen the video of her mother's sacrificial death and knew what Cristina's death and hers would be like. Cristina might be drugged now, but the effect wouldn't last. Whoever these people were, their ritual centered on horrible, excruciating human death. She knew too that while Cristina's burning was the rite's centerpiece, it was she who was to be the very pointed political sideshow, her own torturous murder an example to any of the
Unknowns
who at some point might decide to rebel and turn against them.

There was something else as well: her clear memory of the video and how it had been presented to her. These people were not simply evil, they were profoundly cruel and vindictive. It was as if her heinous death were not enough; they had also to demonstrate their power, their oversight, their all-knowingness. Woe be to anyone in the afterlife who might be reborn and try again to challenge them.

Demi looked off, unable to bear more of her own thoughts. When she did, horror struck once more. As if from some medieval graveyard three more balled crosses rose from the fog. On each was mounted a severed human head.

•
8:15 A.M.

Their retreat back into the church left only one place to go: the secured video control room. A location both helpful and dangerous. It was secluded and they had locked it from inside but it also meant that if they were found, there would be no further escape. The president would be dead before nightfall and so would the rest of them.

"Maybe," the president sat down in the chair and studied the monitors, "what Foxx didn't tell us, they will."

Marten moved next to Hap to stand over the president's shoulder and watch. He marveled at the president's ability to compartmentalize and to turn sheer disadvantage into opportunity. For the most part the situation didn't seem to matter.

"José," the president turned to look at the teenager standing back against the door. He had come this far. Done everything that was asked and more. But now, locked in this room, he was clearly frightened. The presidential helicopters, the flock of Secret Service agents, the bank of high-tech monitors, everything was beyond him.

"It's alright," the president said gently in Spanish. "Come over here with us. You are a man. See what's going on. Maybe you can explain some—"

"The buses are here," Marten said, and the president turned back to the monitors. The string of black buses was seen arriving in the parking lot on five of the monitors. They stopped, the doors opened and the New World guests, resplendent in evening clothes, walked from
them and toward the church entrance. They were smiling, pleasantly chatting among themselves, wholly comfortable in the presence of the heavy security.

"I never saw the full roster of the New World membership but I'll bet I know half those people, some of them well," the president was clearly and deeply troubled. "They represent some of the most powerful and influential institutions around the world. Do they have any idea what's going on? Or are they part of it?"

Just then the church bells began to ring. Curiously, it was not the joyous tolling usually associated with a call to worship but instead the chiming of the Westminster Quarters, the familiar sound heard from clock towers around the world to strike the hour.

"Why the Quarters?" the president asked. "It's not on the hour. Is there some significance here? What does it mean, if anything?"

"Mr. President, Marten," Hap cut in. "Monitor seven, middle row."

A parking-lot camera aimed down the road toward the main resort buildings picked up a distant line of helicopters coming in. There were four and then a fifth. The last, the U.S. Army Chinook.

"Who is it?" the president was intent on the screen.

"I'd guess Woody," Hap said, "with the CNP behind him. Probably Bill Strait in the Chinook with Dr. Marshall and Jake Lowe. We came up from Madrid in it. I didn't think things could get much worse, but suddenly they are."

•
8:16 A.M.

U.S. Marine Corps Major Woody, Woods set the U.S. Marine Corps attack helicopter down on the Aragon Resort's ninth fairway. Seconds later three CNP heli
copters landed. And then the Chinook set down. Immediately its doors were pulled back. Bill Strait came out first, followed by Dr. James Marshall and then a dozen U.S. Secret Service agents. The second, third, and fourth helos were Spanish CNP, with Captain Diaz in the lead chopper; their assignment: search the area from the vineyard's work road to the outside edge of the vineyards while other Secret Service, CIA, and CNP ground and helicopter units worked the area between the vineyards and the mountains. The route they suspected the president and anyone with him might have used; a group that would include Nicholas Marten and Hap Daniels.

By the vice president's order, the area from the vineyard road to the resort and beyond, all the way to the church, was under the control of his Secret Service detail, the Spanish Secret Service, and the Spanish police already deployed. If the president was within that perimeter he would be found. The outer perimeters belonged to Bill Strait and Captain Diaz.

In between, the Chinook stood by, ready to take the president out.

•
8:24 A.M.

President Harris had watched his close friend Rabbi Aznar give a brief convocation before the assembled members of the New World Institute. Then he had shaken hands with Vice President Rogers and left the stage on the arm of Reverend Beck.

Less than thirty seconds later an exterior security camera picked him up as he was escorted out and into the parking lot by two of the monks. The Secret Service helped him into one of the black SUVs and he was driven away. Immediately afterward the monks went back inside, closing the doors behind them.

"What happened?" the president asked as the monitors suddenly lost their picture. Immediately he had his answer: a computerized listing began:

Access one: locked. Lock confirmed.
Access two: locked. Lock confirmed.
Access three: locked. Lock confirmed.

The access scroll continued: numbers four to ten.
Then came the last:

Lock confirmation completed.

"Those are the church doors, Mr. President," Hap said quietly. "There are ten in all. Door number ten is the one we came in through. What we have here is a 'no one gets in, no one gets out' situation. Someone comes down to check on these monitors, we're done."

"Cousin," Marten abruptly turned to the president. "If I was right about what Foxx had constructed, if this church was in his plan and he ran the monorail all the way here, then it's somewhere below us. If it is and we can get to it, we have a way out.

"I want to send José to look for it. If he runs into someone all he has to do is say he works in maintenance, it's his first day on the job, and he got stuck when the
doors locked. He's just trying to find another way out. Would you ask him to do that please?"

Ten seconds later Hap let José out, telling him to knock three times when he came back.

•
8:30 A.M.

"Now what?" The president was staring at the monitors that had suddenly gone black once again. Now they came back on and were showing various angles of the same thing. All two hundred very distinguished members of the New World Institute had left their seats and were filing to a dozen different locations, each monitored in close-up. Vice President Rogers was first, then one by one the others followed. Each person stepped forward, gave his or her name, place and date of birth, then reached up and pressed his or her left thumb against a small steel box.

Immediately a reading was superimposed over the person's face:

Member 2702. DNA taken: DNA confirmed.
Member 4481. DNA taken: DNA confirmed.
Member 3636. DNA taken: DNA confirmed.

"Whatever the hell's going on, I can guarantee you this video feed is not going out to main security," Hap said, his eyes locked on the monitors.

The parade continued. Members' ages ranged from twenty-eight to eighty-three. Places of birth were equally diverse: Basel, Switzerland; Salinas, Brazil; New York, New York; Berlin, Germany; Yokohama, Japan; Ottawa, Canada; Marseilles, France; Tampico,
Mexico; Antwerp, Belgium; Cambridge, England; Brisbane, Australia.

The moment each member completed their sign-in a monk stepped in with what appeared to be a sterile swab, cleaned the mechanism, then stepped back, having made it ready for the next person.

"Jesus Lord," the president's voice caught in his throat as a woman stepped before a camera.

"Jane Dee Baker," she said, then gave the place and date of her birth and stepped forward to give a sample of her DNA.

"Chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Intelligence and Counterterrorism." Marten felt the same chilling surprise.

"Democrat from Maine, Mike Parsons's subcommittee," the president finished. "The one Merriman Foxx testified before."

"It's why Mike's dead and his son is dead, and why Caroline is dead," Marten said with no emotion at all. "Mike found out what was going on, or some of it anyway."

"Something else," the president said. "Each person is using his left thumb for the DNA signature. From this angle we can't see it but I would bet next year's congressional budget that every last one of them is tattooed with the sign of the Aldebaran."

•
8:35 A.M.

The soft, melodic chant of the monks floated across the church as the New World delegates returned to their seats. In the next moment the lights dimmed, as if the place was a theater and a performance was about to begin. And then it did.

"Cristina!" Marten blurted as they saw the floor in front of the altar abruptly slide back and a darkened hydraulic stage with swirling fog and eerie theatrical lighting rise up from below like some bizarre Las Vegas extravaganza. Cristina sat majestically in the center of it on a nearly invisible throne, a bright spotlight illuminating her from above as if she were some sort of grand goddess. Now a second spotlight came on nearer the front of the stage. In its glow were three apparent stage-prop severed heads mounted atop Aldebaran crosses.

As if preprogrammed, the automated, remote cameras began to play over the congregation as they inched forward in their seats. This was clearly why they were here, what they had come for and it shone in their faces.

"This Cristina, who is she?" the president asked quietly, clearly and unemotionally trying to understand what was going on.

"She was with Beck and Merriman Foxx in Malta," Marten said.

Just then, and again as if the entire bank of remote cameras had been preprogrammed, one of them moved off to begin a slow pan across the fog and onto the three severed heads mounted atop the Aldebaran crosses.

"My God, Mr. President," Hap said in a voice barely above a whisper. "Those heads are real."

Abruptly ten of the twenty monitors went blank, then two seconds later picked up the visual as another camera moved closer, one by one, showing the heads in extreme close-up. An explanatory caption was superimposed directly beneath each.

The first was that of a man, bald and very old.

Caption:
GIACOMO GELA. DIVULGED SECRETS OF
"
μ"
PURPOSE SERVED. TERMINATED.