Allan Folsom - The Machiavelli Covenant

Marten was running with the other agents, a 9mm Sig Sauer that Hap had tossed him as they left the command post in his hand. Ahead they saw the pond and the barking, howling dogs stopped at the edge of it. Bill Strait was in front of him gripping a machine pistol and running flat out. Suddenly he cut right toward the far side of the pond and what looked like the ruins of old barracks some distance behind it.

Marten veered right, following Strait and away from the agents running in front of him. Strait was alone. If he got into trouble he was by himself.

Fifty yards ahead Strait jumped a small stream and kept on. Lungs on fire, Marten followed. In seconds he was at the stream and over it. For a moment he lost Strait. Didn't know where he had gone. Then he saw him, charging down an overgrown gravel path toward the ruined barracks.

Strait glanced back, then said something into his headset, and ran on with a renewed burst of speed.

Marten hit the gravel pathway still fifty yards behind him. As he did, his feet slid out from under him and he went down. As quickly he recovered and was up and running. Closing now, forty yards, thirty.

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 .