The Machiavelli Covenant (73 page)

Ahead he saw Strait stop at a dilapidated stone-and-wood building. Then, machine pistol up, carefully move to a partially open door.

"Bill, wait!" Marten yelled.

Strait either didn't hear him or ignored him, because in the next instant he slipped through the door and disappeared from sight.

Two seconds, three, and Marten was there, right outside. There was an abrupt, very brief exchange of voices inside, then came the dull, sharp spit of machine-pistol fire.

"Christ," Marten breathed. Sig Sauer up, he ducked low and went in through the door.

Strait swung the machine pistol in reaction as he came in.

"Don't shoot!" Marten yelled.

Sweating, breathing hard, Strait stared at him for the longest moment, then lowered the gun and nodded toward the rear of the building. The body of a naked middle-aged
man lay against the old stone foundation. A .45 automatic was in one hand, the rest of him a bullet-riddled composite of flesh, blood, and bone.

"Victor Young," Strait said. "He the man you saw in Washington?"

Marten walked over and knelt down just as a half dozen special agents came through the door. Marten studied him for a moment, then stood and looked at Strait.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, it's him."

Strait nodded, then made an adjustment on his headset. "Hap, it's Bill," he said into it. "We got him. I think it's safe to let the show go on."

Marten handed the Sig Sauer to Bill Strait, then moved past the other agents and went back outside. Sun had broken through the clouds here and there, painting the land and buildings with an extraordinary soft white light. It seemed a terrible thing to use the word "beautiful" to describe a place like this, but for the moment it was, and Marten had the sense that despite what had just happened, with the gathering of so many divergent people here that perhaps, and once and for all, a healing had begun.

In the distance he heard the voice of the Polish president resonate through the loudspeakers as he began his welcoming speech and then introduced President Harris.

Abruptly he pushed past a wave of Polish and U.S. Secret Service agents and walked toward the seating area in front of the podium. The president had wanted him there
and close by where he could see him. He picked up his pace. Crossing near the pond, he was suddenly aware of the miles of still-standing barbed-wire fence that despite the beauty of the day seemed as ominous now as it must have been seventy years earlier. Maybe he was wrong, maybe the healing had not begun at all.

"President Janicki, Madam Chancellor, Mr. President,"
President Harris's amplified voice floated across the land,
"my fellow NATO representatives, honored guests and members of the United States Congress in Washington, and those watching on television around the world. I have come here today as one of you, a citizen of this planet, and as such feel it my duty as both that citizen and president of the United States to share with you some facts that have come to light in the last few days and hours
.

"As you know, this convening of the leaders of NATO member countries was to have taken place in Warsaw. Because of a raised security threat it was suggested the meeting be postponed entirely. After discussion with the member countries it was decided we would meet as planned. The change of location was my idea, and after further dialogue the membership concurred. The choice of Auschwitz was not made at random. It is where millions of people were brought against their will and summarily slaughtered by one of the most heinous, genocidal terrorist organizations in modern history."

Marten turned a corner to walk between aging stone buildings. Ahead he could see the president at the podium, while the NATO leaders stood on the platform behind him, the flags of their twenty-six countries fluttering in the breeze. The sniper teams were still clearly in view on the rooftops. Polish commandos wearing flak jackets and
carrying automatic weapons stood guarding the area's perimeter, while inside it hundreds of plainclothes Secret Service agents circulated and watched the crowd.

"In the past week,"
the president continued, his voice exceedingly clear through the banks of loudspeakers,
"the existence of another terrorist organization, as heinous and genocidal as the one under Adolf Hitler, has been exposed and its leadership crushed."

Marten reached the gathering and moved to stand under a tree near the front. As he did he saw the president pause and glance his way and nod ever so slightly. Marten nodded back.

"This group, which we have temporarily and simply called 'The Covenant' represents no single nation, or religion, or race, except its own. It has a membership of highly privileged criminals embedded in political, military, and economic institutions around the world, and, if allegations prove true, have been for centuries. This may sound impossible, something out of fantasy, even absurd. I assure you it is not. In the past days I have personally witnessed their terror firsthand. I have seen the results of their human experiments. I have seen bodies and body parts hidden away in secret laboratories in old mining tunnels in Spain. I have seen them take a people's deepest religious beliefs and manipulate them to serve their own ideals in the form of heinous rituals where human beings are burned alive like witches at the stake in an elaborate ceremony that is the highlight of their so-called 'annual meeting.'

"Last week I was thought to have been spirited out of a hotel in Madrid and taken to an 'undisclosed location' for my own safety because of a 'very credible terrorist threat.' In a way that is true, it was a terrorist threat, but it came from members of my own inner circle. People at
the highest levels of power in the American government, people I have known as my best friends and advisers for years. These people demanded I break the laws of the United States and the oath of office of the presidency. I refused to do so. I was not taken to an undisclosed location, I fled those people. I fled them not only because they threatened my life, but because they and their cohorts in Europe and elsewhere around the world were preparing to unleash a massive genocide against the Middle Eastern states, the scope of which has never before been seen in history
.

"Yesterday I asked for and received the resignations of the following: Vice President of the United States Hamilton Rogers; Secretary of State David Chaplin; Secretary of Defense Terrence Langdon; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, United States Air Force General Chester Keaton; White House Chief of Staff Tom Curran. I have been informed that in the past hour they all have been taken into federal custody at the United States embassy in London. They have been charged with suspicion of membership in a terrorist organization and with high treason against the people and government of the United States
.

"Concurrently I have been informed that similar arrests are underway in Germany and France. It is too early in our investigations to say more except that we anticipate that the detention of prominent persons in other countries will follow
.

"To all of us this has been a thunderclap of surprise, horror, and revulsion. For myself and for the chancellor of Germany and the president of France it is also a personal and deeply felt wound of betrayal by close and long-trusted friends
.

"Bad news does not travel well. Truth of this nature is
both painful and ugly, but the same truth hidden away is far worse. In the coming days and weeks we will know more, and you will be kept informed. In the meantime we can only thank providence that we were fortunate enough to have found the beast and killed it before it began its slaughter
.

"We need only look around us here at Auschwitz to be reminded of the terrible, harrowing price of fanaticism. We owe it to those who perished here, to ourselves, to our children and theirs, to make this cancer a disease of the past. It is something that together we can do
.

"Thank you and good afternoon."

The president stared out at the audience for several seconds before turning to take the handshakes of Anna Bohlen of Germany and Jacques Géroux of France and then of the president of Poland, Roman Janicki. And then of the leaders of the NATO countries who came down one by one to greet him and say a few words and to solemnly take his hand.

For the longest moment Marten, like nearly everyone else—the guests, the security personnel, the media—stood silent. The president's speech had been no self-serving discourse, no political glad hand; he had spoken the truth as he had promised Marten he would. How and when and where the fallout would come—a firestorm of protest and outrage in the Middle East and in Muslim enclaves around the world, charges the president was mentally unbalanced and incapable of serving, furious denials and counterattacks by those arrested or revealed as they rallied their people behind them—was impossible to say. But it would come as the president had known it would from the beginning.

"I'm going to say some things that diplomatically might be better left unsaid," he had told Marten, "all the
while knowing the reaction around the world might and probably will be ugly. But I'm going to say them anyway because I think we've reached a point in time where the people elected to serve need to tell the truth to the people who elected them, whether they like what they hear or not. None of us anywhere can afford to go on with politics as usual."

The president had asked Marten to come to supply moral support, but he hadn't needed it. He had his own clear vision of who he was and of the grave responsibility of his office. His "friends" had made him president because he had never made an enemy of anyone. It made them think he was soft and they could mold him any way they wished. The trouble was, they'd misjudged him greatly.

Marten took one last glance at the president and the leaders surrounding him. That was his world, where he belonged. It was time Marten got back to his. He was turning, starting to walk away, when he heard a familiar voice call his name. He looked up and saw Hap Daniels coming toward him.

"We're leaving. Marine One, wheels up from here in ten minutes," he said. "Air Force One, wheels up from Krakow in fifty. The president asked us to file a flight plan through Manchester. Drop you off there," he smiled, "kind of like a personal shuttle."

Marten grinned. "I've already booked a commercial flight, Hap. Tell the president thanks but I don't need the publicity. He'll know what I'm talking about. Tell him maybe sometime we can all sit down someplace for a steak and a beer. You and him and me and Miguel. The boys too, José especially."

"Be careful, he just might do it."

Marten smiled, then extended his hand. "I'll be waiting."

They shook hands and then Hap was called away. Marten watched him go, then turned and headed for the gate. A minute later he passed between the columns and looked back at the ancient wrought-iron sign above it.

Arbeit Macht Frei,
Work Shall Make You Free.

The slogan had been the Nazis' idea of graveyard humor, yet aside from them, no one who saw it smiled much. But in his exhausted state the words crept through and touched Marten in an entirely unintended way, making him smile inwardly and shake his head at the irony of it.

It made him wonder if he still had a job.

•
MANCHESTER, ENGLAND. THE BANFIELD COUNTRY
ESTATE, HALIFAX ROAD. MONDAY, JUNE 12, 8:40 A.M.

It had been two months to the day when Marten had told Hap good-bye and walked out of Auschwitz. If he'd been worried about keeping his job at Fitzsimmons and Justice, he needn't have bothered. By the time he had returned to Manchester that evening he had a half-dozen very recent calls backed up on his voice mail. Four were from his manager Ian Graff asking him to call him the moment he got in. The others were, respectively, from Robert Fitzsimmons and Horace Justice. Fitzsimmons he knew well from the workplace. Horace Justice, the founder of the company, eighty-seven years old and retired and living in the south of France, he'd never met. Still, he had messages from all three wishing him well and hoping he would be at work first thing the next morning.

The primary reason?

The president, it seemed, had placed direct calls to each man from Air Force One telling them how grateful he was for Marten's personal assistance during the last days and trusting that his unreported absence wouldn't be held against him. Indeed it wasn't. He was
put immediately and full-time back onto the Banfield job, which between the arguments and changes of mind between Mr. and Mrs. Banfield, seemed to have been filled with more minefields than anything he'd encountered with the president. Still, he'd eagerly jumped back in and pressed on. Now, finally and at last, things were coming together. The grading had been done, the irrigation was in, the planting was beginning, and the Ban-fields were at peace. Chiefly because Mrs. Banfield was happily pregnant with twins and hence had shifted her time, opinions, and energy to preparing the house for their arrival. Happily too, Mr. Banfield, when he wasn't advancing his career as a professional soccer star, followed her indoors. All of which left Marten to supervise the remainder of the landscape work. Which was what he did while the world hung upside down in massive reaction to the president's speech.

The president had been right when he'd said things "might and probably will be ugly." They were from the outset and still were.