The Machiavelli Covenant

by Allan Folsom

  Marten rushed forward, moving through people seemingly frozen in place and looking toward something in front of them. Then he saw a large delivery truck stopped in the middle of the street, its front grillwork badly dented, the body of Salt and Pepper on the ground in front of it.

  People stood around silent, staring. Marten moved in slowly and went up to Salt and Pepper. Kneeling down, he put a hand to his carotid artery trying to find a pulse. The truck driver, a male, thirty at most, stood by the open door to his cab. Half in shock, motionless.

  Marten suddenly looked to the crowd around him. "Call an ambulance. Ambulance! Ambulance!" he said loudly, then twisted back, opened Salt and Pepper's sport coat and put a hand on his heart. Again he touched the carotid artery, held his hand there a few seconds, then slowly reached over, closed Salt and Pepper's sport coat, and stood up.

  "Ambulance!" he said again, then moved away and off through the crowd. Around him he could see people on cell phones calling for help. Behind him the truck driver stood where he had been, frozen in place beside his truck.

  Marten kept walking. All he needed was for the police to arrive and question him about the man hit by the truck. They would want to know his name. Ask if he was a doctor. And finding he wasn't, want to know why he'd gone to help as he had. Want to know what he had seen. What details he could fill in. He had no knowledge of Spanish law and how it applied to accidents but the last thing he wanted was to be interviewed by the police or the press or have his picture taken by the paparazzi or be a video snippet on local television news.

  What he did want was no connection to Salt and Pepper at all.

  44

  • ALTARIA TRAIN #01138, MADRID TO BARCELONA, 4:35 P.M.

  President of the United States John Henry Harris nodded a thanks to the counterman in the cafeteria car, then took his purchase, a sandwich and bottle of mineral water, to a small side table to eat. Other than the counterman there were six other people in the car, four men and two women, one older than the other. Of the men, two sat by a window drinking beer; another stood, paper coffee cup in hand, staring out at the passing countryside. The last sat at a table sharing a platter of small sandwiches with the two women. These three seemed harmless, a brother and sister and maybe an aunt, or husband and wife and his or her older sibling. It was the other three he wasn't so sure about.

  Minutes before, they had left the city of Lleida after a stop in Zaragoza and were moving northeast with a stop at Valls before they were to arrive at the Barcelona-Sants station at a little past six in the evening. For the most part the trip had been uneventful with no one giving him as much as a second look, but at Lleida several armed men in uniform had boarded and shortly afterward four more had come on, dressed in civilian clothes but with the certain style and body movement that suggested they were some kind of plainclothes agents. It made him wonder if one or perhaps all of the other three men, the two sipping beer and the man standing, weren't some kind of agents as well, Spanish or American. All three had come into the car after he had and were close enough to the far door to prevent him going out of it if they chose. The uniformed men or other plainclothes agents who had come on in Lleida could easily come in and block the door behind him. If he was right and they did, the game was over.

  Harris quickly finished his sandwich and took another sip of water. Then, dutifully putting the paper plate the sandwich had come on in a trash receptacle, he walked past the man and women and left.

  He walked the length of the next car and entered the one behind it, taking his seat in the second-class car next to the man in the leather jacket and black beret who had been his seating companion since Madrid. By now the man had turned toward the window, his beret pulled down covering most of his head, and was apparently sleeping. Harris took a deep breath and relaxed, then picked his folded copy of El País newspaper from the seatback in front of him and opened it.

  It was now 4:44. The next stop was Valls at 5:03 and Harris wasn't sure what to do when he got there. He knew Hap Daniels would be more than determined to bring him home. He would be feverish. Not only had he become the first Secret Service agent in charge of a presidential detail ever to lose a POTUS, he would also be embarrassed beyond measure and would take enormous flak from above to the point where there was every chance he would be fired. Personally he would feel he had monstrously let down a friend.

  The Secret Service's first presumption would be that he had been a victim of foul play and would have acted accordingly. By now the CIA, FBI and NSA would be wholly involved. Madrid would have been scoured by Spanish intelligence and the Madrid state police. A larger search would have been expanded to include all of Europe and North Africa, with another team working out of the Rome field office covering the Middle East and into Russia and other former Soviet bloc countries. All of it done under blackout orders, or as they would call it, "under the cover of night." Yet by now they would have enough information to be reasonably certain of what had really happened, that he had gone out on his own. In result an angered Jake Lowe and National Security Adviser Jim Marshall would have made a convincing case that he had done it because something was gravely wrong, that he had suffered a mental breakdown of some kind. It was the only story they could make work, but it was a good one because, for the people responsible for protecting him, the whole thing would rise above the horror of the president being kidnapped to what Lowe and company would play as an achingly human story of the most powerful man in the world come apart.

  Consequently everyone, from the group that had been in Evan Byrd's Madrid home the night before to the secretary of Homeland Security to the director of the Secret Service and on down would do everything in their power to make sure he was found and brought home and out of harm's way as quickly as possible, with only a few very select people having any knowledge at all of what was really going on.

  "Home and out of harm's way" meant he would be delivered to Jake Lowe and company, who would already have arranged for him to be placed in their care. Once that happened he knew the rest. He would immediately be spirited to a place remote enough and safe enough to isolate him and then kill him—a massive stroke or heart attack or something equally convincing.

  The sound of the door opening at the far end of the car made Harris look up. Two of the armed, uniformed men who had boarded the train at Lleida entered and stood there surveying the passengers as the door closed behind them. Harris could see they were members of the CNP or Cuerpo Nacional de Policía, the Spanish federal police. Automatic weapons slung over their shoulders, they stood silently for a moment longer and then slowly started forward, the first CNP studying the passengers on the right side of the car; the second, the travelers to the left. Halfway down, the first CNP stopped and looked at a male passenger wearing a broad-brimmed hat, then asked to see his identification. The other CNP came over and watched as the man complied. The first CNP studied the man's ID, then handed it back, and the two continued on down the aisle.

  Harris watched them come, then looked to his newspaper. There was little doubt they were looking for him, checking anyone who had even a remote resemblance to him or, in the case of the man with the hat, that they couldn't clearly identify.

  They drew closer and he could feel his heart rate pick up, feel sweat bead up on his upper lip. He kept his head down, reading, hoping they would pass on by and go into the next car. Suddenly he saw a polished boot stop next to him.

  "You," the CNP said in Spanish. "What is your name? Where do you live?"

  His heart in his mouth, Harris looked up. The CNP was not looking at him but at the man in the beret dozing next to him. Slowly the man raised the beret and looked up. By now the second CNP had joined the first. Harris felt like a lamb in the presence of two starving lions. All they had to do was turn their attention to him.

  "What is your name? Where do you live?" the first CNP snapped again.

  "Fernando Alejandro Ponce. I live at number sixty-two Carrer del Bruc in Barcelona," the beret said in Spanish.
"I am an artist!" Suddenly he was getting indignant. "A painter! What do you know of art? What do you want with me anyway?"

  "Identification," the first CNP said firmly. By now everyone in the car was looking their way.

  The second CNP unslung his automatic rifle and slowly, angrily, Fernando Alejandro Ponce reached into his leather jacket and slid out some kind of identification card. He handed it to the first CNP.

  Abruptly he looked to Harris. "Why don't you ask this man his name? And where he lives? Demand his identification? It's only fair! Go ahead, ask him!"

  Jesus, God, Harris thought and held his breath, waiting for the CNP to take up the man's challenge and do as he demanded. The CNP looked at Fernando Alejandro's ID card, then handed it back.

  "Well, are you going to ask him?" Angrily Fernando Alejandro waved his ID card at Harris.

  "Go back to sleep, painter," the CNP said. Then, with a glance at Harris, he turned, and with his companion, continued on down the car. A moment later they went out the door at the far end.

  Alejandro's eyes followed them all the way, then shot back to Harris. "¡Cabrones! ¿En todo Caso, ¿a quién diablos están buscando?" he snarled. Bastards! Who the hell are they looking for anyway?

  "No tengo idea." No idea. Harris shrugged. "No tengo idea en absoluto." No idea at all.

  45

  • BARCELONA, 5:00 P.M.

  Twenty minutes after the accident in the Gothic Quarter Nicholas Marten quietly checked out of the Hotel Regente Majestic, apologizing to the sympathetic desk clerk still on duty and saying his newspaper had abruptly changed his assignment. Graciously she canceled his credit card deposit and tore up the receipt. Five minutes afterward he was clear of the hotel and back on the street carrying his small traveling bag, never letting Demi know what he had done. Clearly there was no way to know if Salt and Pepper had been called to the restaurant by the waiter or if he had tracked Marten to the Regente or if someone from the hotel had alerted him and he'd tailed him from there, but by checking out as he had he'd left no clear trail for anyone to follow.

  Nonetheless they knew he was in Barcelona, and with Salt and Pepper dead it was only a matter of time before they sent someone else to take his place. Someone who would be able to recognize him but whom he would not know. A stranger. The only advantage he had, if it was an advantage at all, was that now he knew who Salt and Pepper had been: Klaus Melzer, 455 Ludwigstrasse, Munich, Germany, a civil engineer.

  Marten had known he was dead the minute he saw the savage dent in the truck's grillwork and the way his body was sprawled on the pavement in front of the vehicle. Feeling his carotid artery for a pulse had confirmed it. The rest, the pleading to the crowd to call an ambulance, the opening of his jacket to feel for a heartbeat, then the closing of his jacket and the second plea for an ambulance had all been show. He'd seen the slight bulge in the man's sport coat when he'd first bent over him. That was what he had wanted and what he had taken as he left, Salt and Pepper's wallet. Inside he'd found his German driver's license, credit cards and several business cards with his name and his firm's name: Karlsruhe & Lahr, Bauingenieure, Brunnstrasse 24, Munich.

  • 5:44 P.M.

  Marten checked into the Rivoli Jardín Hotel. He was still in the Gothic Quarter but several long blocks south of the Regente Majestic. Again, and with no other choice, he used his own name and identification to register. Ten minutes later he was unpacked and on his cell phone trying to get through to Peter Fadden in London. Instead of reaching the Washington Post writer he got his voice mail saying he was not available and to please leave word. Marten did, asking Fadden to call him as soon as he could. Then he clicked off and dialed the Hotel Regente Majestic asking for Demi's room. The phone rang through but there was no answer. He clicked off without leaving a message and with the gnawing feeling that maybe it had been a mistake to let her go. She'd tried to get rid of him before and was angry all over again after the episode at the Four Cats, and what had he done but put her in a cab and send her off? It made no difference what she'd promised, all she had to do was check out of the hotel and there was every chance he'd never see her again. On top of that there was still that something about her, her manner, the sense he'd had before that she was strangely unconnected and that everything she was about had to do with something else. Whether that had to do with her missing sister, or whether the whole thing about her was made up and it was something else entirely, was impossible to tell. Whatever it was added to the discomfort he felt about her now.

  Marten put down the phone and picked up Klaus Melzer's—Salt and Pepper's—driver's license. He turned it over in his hand, then looked again at his business card. Never mind that Marten had been handed off to him at the airport. Why would a forty-something German civil engineer be tailing him? It made no sense.

  Unless—

  Marten clicked on his phone and dialed the Munich number for Karlsruhe & Lahr listed on Melzer's business card. Maybe his identification—driver's license, credit cards, business cards—was false, maybe there was no Klaus Melzer or Karlsruhe & Lahr at all. Ten seconds later the second half of his conjecture fell apart:

  "Karlsruhe und Lahr, guter nachmittag." Karlsruhe and Lahr, good afternoon, a cheery female voice said.

  Five seconds after that the first part went out the window too.

  "Klaus Melzer, please," Marten said.

  "I'm sorry, Mr. Melzer is out of the office until next week," the voice said in accented English. "Would you like to leave a message?"

  "Do you know where he can be reached?"

  "He's traveling, sir. May I have him return your call?"

  "No, thank you. I'll get back to him."

  Marten clicked off.

  So there was a Klaus Melzer and there was a Karlsruhe & Lahr. That confirmation brought him back to his original thought—why had a middle-aged German civil engineer seemingly with a good job been following him? Why had the handoff from the young man to Melzer at the airport seemed so professional? Why had he run away when Marten was about to confront him? All he'd had to do was deny whatever Marten accused him of and that would have been that. There was nothing Marten could have done. But he hadn't and now Melzer was dead.

  "Dammit," Marten said in frustration then clicked on his phone and tried Demi once more.

  He let the phone ring until the hotel operator came on.

  "I'm sorry, Ms. Picard is not answering."

  "Thanks," Marten said and was about to hang up when he had one more thought. "Has Reverend Beck checked in yet? He was coming in from Malta."

  "Let me check, sir." There was a brief pause then the operator came back on. "No, sir. Not yet."

  "Thank you."

  Marten clicked off then took a determined breath and crossed the room to plug in his cell phone to recharge it. If Demi wasn't answering and Beck hadn't checked in, then where was she? Again he had the disturbing thought that she had already left, maybe to meet Beck, or even Merriman Foxx. If she had, maybe she was not in Barcelona at all but somewhere else. If so, this time she would have covered her tracks well, making sure there would be no trail he could follow.

  46

  • 5:58 P.M.

  President John Henry Harris watched the countryside turn to suburb and then to city as Altaria train #01138 neared Barcelona. In the distance he could see the sunlight glint off the Mediterranean Sea. In five minutes they were due to arrive at Barcelona-Sants Station. His plan was to transfer to the 6:25 Catalunya Express, which, barring difficulty, would get him into Gerona at 7:39. Once there, there would be no calling Rabbi David Aznar's house for directions because he knew his phones would be monitored by some piece of Hap Daniels's intelligence machinery and that meant he would have to find Rabbi David's house on his own. But he had come this far without being discovered, and he had to trust his luck would hold and he could go the rest of the way without incident.

  • 6:08 P.M.

  The Altaria pulled into Barcelona-Sants Station five minutes late. John Henry Harri
s stood with the other passengers as they collected their things.

  He nodded to Fernando Alejandro Ponce, his leather-jacketed, beret-wearing artist seat-mate, then followed the others from the train. When he did his heart came up in his throat. Armed, uniformed police had blocked the exits and were checking the identification of everyone leaving the terminal. The lines felt like they were miles long. Harris's only thought was that Hap Daniels— under the directive of the director of the Secret Service in Washington, under orders from the secretary of Homeland Security, under orders from Vice President Hamilton Rogers and the rest of Jake Lowe's "pals"—had put his foot to the accelerator. It meant this sort of thing would be going on all over Spain, if not all of Europe.

  • 6:12 P.M.

  President Harris stood in the ticket line for the Catalunya Express which was scheduled to depart for Gerona in thirteen minutes. He had purposely not bought a transfer ticket to Gerona in Madrid when he'd paid his fare for Barcelona, simply because he didn't want to alert anyone who might have recognized him, or who might later be questioned, his ticket seller in particular, as to his true destination. He now wished he had. The line to the ticket counter was twenty deep, and the police were walking up and down looking carefully at the people in line. And not just here, but at every ticket window.

  • 6:19 P.M.

  The line inched forward. People around him mumbled about what was going on. There was fear among them too, with memories of the horror that had gone on at Atocha Station on March 11, 2004, still achingly clear in their memories. Without doubt they were wary about the armed force around them. Many were half expecting a bomb to go off at any second.