by Allan Folsom
But the other thing did.
It was something he had forgotten completely until he had noticed the unusual length of Foxx's fingers as they circled his whiskey glass. It was what Caroline had told him over the phone when she'd first called him so fearfully in Manchester and asked him to come to Washington.
"I didn't like him," she'd said about the white-haired man who'd come to the clinic where she'd been taken following the injection given her by Doctor Stephenson. "Everything about him frightened me. The way he stared at me. The way he touched my face and my legs with his long, hideous, fingers."
Those fingers around the whiskey glass were only part of it. The rest had come when an angry Foxx had held his snifter in both hands with his thumbs protruding up and over the rim. It was then he'd seen it and remembered the whole of Caroline's description: "The way he touched my face and my legs with his long, hideous, fingers; and that horrid thumb with its tiny balled cross."
A faded cross—two straight lines that intersected in the form of a cross with a tiny circle, a ball, at the tip of each of the four ends—had been tattooed on the tip of Merriman Foxx's left thumb.
Marten had almost missed it, but he hadn't. A tiny, faded tattooed cross described in passing by a terrified, dying woman. At the time it had been part of a jumble of information and had seemingly meant little. Now it meant everything.
It told him he had his man.
27
Marten reached into his pocket and clicked off the tape recorder. There was little doubt that it was Foxx who had overseen the murder of Caroline but there was nothing incriminating in the recorded conversation nor was a lone tattoo the kind of hard evidence Peter Fadden would need to warrant an investigation by The Washington Post. Marten needed something concrete and definitive but getting it or even how to approach getting it would be hugely difficult, especially since Foxx had clearly closed the door on him and because there was no doubt the doctor would contact Congresswoman Baker's office to verify who he was. Once that happened he wouldn't get within a mile of him.
"Mr. Marten."
Marten looked up to see Demi Picard alone and coming toward him. It made him wonder what she was doing here. That she was with Beck was no surprise because she had told him the reverend was one of the subjects of a photo-essay book she was doing on political clergy. But that they were both here in Malta and at Foxx's dinner table so soon after Caroline's service in Washington was more than a little disturbing, especially now, with what he'd learned about Foxx.
"Ms. Picard." He started to smile. "How nice to—"
Her eyes suddenly narrowed and she cut him off in a sotto voce charged with anger. "Why are you here? In Malta? In this restaurant?"
"I was going to ask you the same thing."
"Dr. Foxx and Reverend Beck are old friends," she said defensively. "We were on our way to meet with a group of Western clergy visiting the Balkans and stopped overnight to visit."
"Presumably you know Reverend Beck quite well."
"Yes."
"Then maybe you can explain how an African-American minister can be the friend of an apartheid-era officer in the South African army, one who headed a notorious medical unit that developed secret biological weapons designed to wipe out the black African population."
"You would have to ask Reverend Beck."
Marten stared at her. "What if I asked you about 'the witches'?"
"Don't," she warned.
"Don't?"
"I said, don't!"
"You're the one who brought it up," Marten said quickly. "You came to me, remember?"
"Demi," a familiar voice called from behind her. They turned to see Beck approaching. Cristina Vallone, Merriman Foxx's attractive female friend, was with him.
"I'm afraid Dr. Foxx has been called away. An urgent family matter," he said to them both, then directed the next at Demi. "He asked that I see you and Cristina back to the hotel."
Demi hesitated, and Marten could see she was troubled by the sudden turn of events. "Thank you," she said politely, "I have to use the loo. I will meet you upstairs."
"Of course." Beck looked to Marten as she went off toward the restrooms. "It was a pleasure to see you again, Mr. Marten, perhaps we shall do it another time soon."
"The pleasure would be mine, reverend."
Five minutes later Marten stood on Triq id-Dejqa watching the taillights of a taxi carrying Reverend Beck, Cristina, and Demi Picard disappear in a swirling fog. He glanced back down the dampened alley toward the Café Tripoli. The door was closed. Nothing stirred. He wondered how Foxx had left without him seeing him, or if he had left at all. In either case there was nothing he could do about it now. He took a breath and then stepped off for the walk back to his hotel, Demi's words still clear as when she'd stopped at the bar on her way from the loo.
"I don't know who you really are or what you're doing here," she'd said forcefully with the same heated tone she used before. "But stay away from us before you ruin everything." With that she'd turned and gone up the stairs to where Cristina and the Reverend Beck waited.
Ruin everything. What did that mean?
And now as he walked, making his way in damp night air toward the R.A.F. war memorial and after it the Upper Baracca Gardens on the way to his hotel, Demi's words faded in favor of what Reverend Beck had said as he bade him goodbye.
It was a pleasure to see you again, Mr. Marten, perhaps we shall do it another time soon.
See you again—again.
It meant Beck knew who he was, and clearly remembered their meeting in Caroline's hospital room. At the time they'd met, the subject of Marten's profession had never come up, so it was possible that he might believe Marten did indeed work in Congresswoman Baker's office. Nonetheless it was a coincidence that would have been pointedly discussed with Foxx when he returned to the table. Couple that with the fact that Marten had not only brought up Caroline's name and that of Dr. Stephenson but that he'd said Mike Parsons had left a memo behind questioning the veracity of Foxx's testimony before the committee—Foxx would have put all those things together in a hurry, which was undoubtedly the reason the evening had ended so abruptly for everyone.
28
• MADRID, 10:40 P.M.
The lights of nighttime Madrid flashed by. The Palacio de la Moncloa, residence of the Spanish prime minister, the dinner there with the newly elected prime minister and the twenty or so top Spanish industrialists he had invited to join them, over and done with and left behind.
Only four people rode in the presidential limousine, the Secret Service agent driving, a second agent riding shotgun beside him, and the two in the back; President John Henry Harris and his Secret Service special agent in charge, Hap Daniels. The interior communications system was turned off. Whatever the president and Daniels said was wholly private.
The motorcade itself had been reduced to the presidential limousine, two black Secret Service SUVs, and the black communications Hummer following behind. This time there was no ambulance, no staff van, no press pool van—just a small presidential motorcade going to a private residence in the wealthy La Moraleja suburb to share a brief drink with an old friend, Evan Byrd. Byrd was a former network news correspondent and press secretary to the late president Charles Cabot. For a time he had been President Harris's press secretary, before he retired to this Madrid suburb. After that it was back to the Hotel Ritz where the presidential entourage had taken over the entire fourth floor and the president looked forward to a sound night's sleep.
"The plane carrying Representative Parsons and his son"—Hap Daniels was reading from notes taken in a small spiral notebook. No BlackBerry here, no chance that the information he had received could have been electronically monitored, just handwritten notes jotted down in an everyday notebook. What he had learned had come over the STU, or secure-line phone, he had as part of his own personal communications equipment—"went down due to pilot error, at least according to investigators from the NTSB. No part of the aircraft was fou
nd to have malfunctioned."
"We know the official word, Hap," Harris said, "Is that all you were able to find out?"
"As far as the crash is concerned, yes, sir. The thing that no one seems to know about, or at least to have brought up, was that Mrs. Parsons was to have been on the flight with them. Her plans changed at the last minute and she flew back to Washington on a commercial flight. It was coincidental. There certainly was no conspiracy theory behind the crash. No reason to expect foul play. She never made a thing of it, at least publicly. It appears to have been one of those things that just happened."
"One of those things. . . ."
"Yes, sir."
President Harris nodded vaguely, trying to absorb whatever meaning there might or might not be in Caroline's change of plans, then immediately moved on.
"The man in Caroline's hospital room, the one Caroline gave legal access to her and Mike's private papers."
"All we have is what we knew before. His name is Nicholas Marten. He's an American ex-pat living in Manchester, England, and working as a landscape architect. He's seems to have known the Parsons family for a long time; at least that's what he told the D.C. police. Their feeling was that he and Caroline Parsons had had a relationship of some kind. He said they were just old friends. No proof of it. But no sense he was blackmailing her either."
"Why did the police talk to him?"
"He'd made some pretty strong phone calls to Mrs. Parsons's doctor after she died. He wanted to ask her about Mrs. Parsons's illness but she wouldn't talk to him, claimed privileged information between doctor and patient. They thought he might have been involved in her murder. But there was nothing to hold him on so they put him on a plane to England and basically told him not to come back."
"The murder of Caroline Parsons's doctor? What do we have on that?"
"That's a nasty one, Mr. President. She was beheaded."
"Beheaded?"
"Yes, sir. The head hasn't been found, and the police have kept it very quiet during their investigation. The FBI has its own people on it."
"When was someone going to inform the White House?"
"I don't know, sir. Probably they felt there was no need."
"Why a beheading?"
"You're thinking some kind of terrorist act. Some Islamic group."
"It doesn't make any difference what I think. It's what I know. And so far no one seems to know much of anything. Get somebody you're comfortable with in the FBI to keep you on top of it. Tell them I'm interested personally but don't want the media to jump on it and blow it out of proportion. We don't need to stir up the Islamic world any more than it's already stirred up, especially if there's nothing to it and the head business was done by some cuckoo out there."
"Yes, sir."
"Now," the president shifted gears. "Caroline Parsons. I want a report on what kind of infection she had, how she got it, and the treatment for it, from initial diagnosis to death. Again, I don't want to send up a flare, I just want the information as quietly as you can get it. We've got four people dead here in a very short time. Three from the same family and the last, Caroline's doctor."
"There's something else you should know, Mr. President. I don't know if it means anything but Representative Parsons . . ."
"What about him?"
"He tried to get an appointment to see you privately. Twice. Once during his subcommittee hearings on terrorism. Once again the day they were concluded."
"How do you know?"
"His secretary requested it, but she never heard back."
"Mike Parsons had full access to me, anytime. Chief of staff knew that, my secretary knew it too. What happened?"
"I don't know, sir. You'd have to ask them."
Suddenly Hap Daniels put a hand to his headset; at the same time the limousine slowed and then leaned as the Secret Service driver made a sharp right turn and started up a long private driveway.
"Thank you," Daniels said into his headset, then looked to the president. "We're here, sir. Mr. Byrd's residence."
29
Evan Byrd greeted him at the door like an old school chum he hadn't seen for years, not with a handshake but a bear hug.
"Damn good to see you, John," he said, leading him past an ornate fountain and then inside through a Spanish-tiled foyer and into a small dark-paneled room with a full bar and big leather chairs that faced a fireplace where a warming fire crackled.
"Not bad for a retired civil servant, huh?" Byrd grinned. "Sit down. What can I fix you to drink?"
"I don't know. I've had my share of everything tonight, just water or coffee, black, if you have it."
"Damned right I have it." Byrd winked and pressed a button on an intercom at the bar and ordered coffee in Spanish. Then he walked over and sat down in a big chair next to Harris.
Evan Byrd was in his early seventies and dressed casually in cream-colored slacks and a matching sweater. He seemed a little on the heavy side but otherwise appeared in good shape, still favoring the stylish long gray hair and matching sideburns Harris remembered. Byrd had been around network television and Washington politics for nearly forty years before he retired to Spain, and still had an active Rolodex that would put most Washington insiders to shame, meaning he knew just about everyone worth knowing and as a result wielded considerable influence without ever seeming to.
"Well," he said, "how did it go tonight?"
"I'm not sure." Harris let his gaze fall to the fire. "Spain is in a war with itself. The prime minister's a nice guy, too much of an altruist maybe and too far to the left to get anything done to really boost the country's economy. But the business leaders, the power guys who joined us for dinner, most of them are fiscally conservative, they see the bottom line as part of the national identity. They have money to invest and at the same time want to be invested in. They want to be in the same global marketplace as everyone else. That puts them at odds with their own leadership. But still the prime minister had the cojones to have them there, so you've gotta give him credit for that. Of course they're all worried about terrorism and where the next shoe will drop. No one's being helped on that count."
"What about France and Germany?"
"You read the papers, Evan. You watch TV. You know as well as I do. Not good."
"What are you going to do about it?"
"I don't know." For the briefest moment the president looked off, then his gaze went to Byrd. "I really don't know."
Just then a voice came over the intercom in Spanish. "Your coffee is ready, sir."
"Gracias," Byrd spoke into the intercom and then stood. "Come on, John, we'll take coffee in the living room." He grinned as President Harris got up from his chair. "I have a surprise for you."
Harris groaned. "Not at this time of night. Evan, I'm too damn tired."
"Trust me, you'll love it."
Seven men waited in the room as they entered and the president knew every one of them. 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, and the men he had last seen in Rome: Tom Curran, his chief of staff; his chief political adviser, Jake Lowe; and national security adviser, Dr. James Marshall.
Evan Byrd closed the door behind them.
"Well, gentlemen, this is indeed a surprise," Harris said evenly, trying not to show his astonishment at their presence. "To what do I owe it?"
"Mr. President," Lowe began, "as you know the NATO meeting in Warsaw is to take place a very few days from now. Before, when we went into Iraq, when we had problems with France and Germany and Russia, our people were not yet in place. Now they are. We have been assured of this by friends of trust. Friends who are in a position to know."
"What friends? Who are you talking about?"
"In order to prevent the kind of unthinkable catastrophe I spoke of earlier"—National Security Adviser Marshall stepped forward—"of terrorist groups taking over the e
ntire Middle East and its oil supply in a very short composite of time, it has become necessary for us to take a full and decisive initiative in that part of the world. To do that we can have no dissent in the United Nations. We have been assured that neither Germany nor France will object this time when we ask for their vote. And, as you know, if they do not object, in all probability neither will Russia or China."
"Assured?"
"Yes, sir, assured."
The president looked around at faces as familiar as family. Like Lowe and Jim Marshall, these people had been his most trusted friends and advisers for years. What the hell was going on? "Just what is it we are going to do in the Middle East?"
"Unfortunately, we're not in a position to tell you, Mr. President," Secretary of Defense Terrence Langdon said directly. "The reason we are here is to ask you to authorize the physical removal of the current leaders of France and Germany."
"Physical removal. . . ." The president looked to Lowe and Marshall. They had started it earlier; now they had the whole team with them. He didn't understand. He was a conservative Republican, the same as they were. They had been behind him all the way, made certain he was nominated, then pulled out every stop possible to guarantee his election. "I think assassination is the word you want, Mr. Secretary."
Then it came to him like a thunderbolt and shook him to his core. He wasn't their president at all; he was their pawn and had been from the beginning. He was there because they had put him there. Because they had been certain he would do whatever they asked.