Allan Folsom - The Machiavelli Covenant

He hadn't been overjoyed at being kicked out, not with his emotions still there and all the questions still unanswered. On the other hand, the "little ride" the detectives had promised could just as well have been back to police headquarters, especially if they'd found someone who had seen him confront Dr. Stephenson outside her house.

By now they might well have found her head and wanted to talk to him about it, maybe even take him down to the morgue to see it and watch his reaction. But they hadn't. Instead they'd simply tossed him out of the country. Just why he wasn't sure, but he suspected they'd learned something about his relationship with Caroline Parsons, the hospital part anyway, and the letter she had written giving him access to her family's personal files. Whether they were concerned that he might become an awkward kink in their investigation into Dr. Stephenson's death, or if word had come from whoever was pulling strings in Caroline's law firm and wanted him as far out of the picture as possible, there was no way to know. Nor was there a way to know if that same someone was connected to Caroline's death, or the deaths of her husband and son, or the decapitation of an already dead Lorraine Stephenson. Of course none of it meant he couldn't just turn around once he got to London and come right back to continue the investigation on his own.

And, police or no police, he might well have if after the plane took off he hadn't remembered the envelope Peter Fadden had given him outside the church and elbowed himself free of the bulging, cooing couple next to him to take it out and open it.

What he'd found inside was what the reporter had promised: his Washington Post business card giving his cell phone number and his e-mail address; the day Dr. Merriman Foxx arrived in Washington, Monday, March 6; and some highly interesting background on Dr. Foxx and the top-secret operations he had headed as brigadier of South Africa's notorious Tenth Medical Brigade. Operations that had included covert international shopping expeditions for pathogens, or disease-causing organisms, and the hardware to disperse them; plans for epidemics that could be spread undetected through black communities to devastate them; special poisons that would cause heart failure, cancer, and sterility; and the development of a kind of "stealth" anthrax strain that would be able to circumvent the intricate tests used to recognize the disease. A major aim was to develop devices to kill opponents of apartheid without a trace.

On top of that Fadden had added something else: the date the doctor left town, Wednesday, March 29, and his current whereabouts, or at least where he was thought to have gone following the secret subcommittee hearings in Washington. It was his home.

200 Triq San Gwann

Valletta,

Malta

Phone #: 243555

This last was what had made Marten change his plans. For now, at least, he would not be returning to Washington once he got to London. Nor would he immediately be going back to his pressing work at his landscape design firm in Manchester. Instead, he would be on the first available flight to Malta.

• SPAIN, COSTA VASCA NUMBER 00204, NIGHT TRAIN,

SAN SEBASTIAN TO MADRID, 5:03 A.M.

"Victor?"

"Yes, Richard."

"Did I wake you?"

"No, I was expecting you to call."

"Where are you now?"

"We left Medina del Campo Station about a half hour ago. We are due to arrive in Madrid at seven thirty-five. Chamartin Station."

"When you get to Chamartin I want you to take the Metro to Atocha Station and from there a taxi to the Westin Palace Hotel on the Plaza de las Cortes. A room is reserved for you."

"Alright, Richard."

"One thing in particular. When you get to Atocha Station, I want you to walk through it carefully and look around. Atocha is where terrorist bombs placed on commuter trains killed one hundred and ninety-one people and injured nearly eighteen hundred more. Imagine what it would have been like when the bombs went off and what would have happened to all those people. And if you were there maybe to you as well. Will you do that, Victor?"

"Yes, Richard."

"Do you have any questions?"

"No."

"Anything you need?"

"No."

"Get some rest. I'll call you later today."

There was a click as Richard signed off, and then Victor's cell phone went silent. For a long moment he did nothing, just listened to the sound of the train as it passed over the rails. Finally he looked around his first-class sleeping compartment with its little washstand, the fresh towels on a rack above him, fresh linens on the bunk bed. There had been only one other time in his life when he had traveled first-class, and that had been yesterday, when he'd taken the high-speed train, the TGV, from Paris to Hendaye on the French-Spanish border. Moreover, the Westin Palace in Madrid was a first-class hotel. As had been the Hotel Boulevard in Berlin. It seemed that from the moment he had shot and killed the man outside Union Station in Washington they had treated him with a great deal more respect than they had before.

He smiled warmly at the thought, then lay back against the soft bedding and closed his eyes. For the first time in as long as he could remember he felt truly appreciated. As if finally, his life had worth and meaning.

• 1:20 P.M.

President John Henry Harris sat in shirtsleeves watching the island of Corsica slide past beneath them, then saw the open water of the Balearic Sea as Air Force One flew west against a strong headwind toward the Spanish mainland. After that it would be on to Madrid and a scheduled dinner with the newly elected prime minister of Spain and a select group of Spanish business leaders.

Earlier that morning he had breakfasted with Italian prime minister Aldo Visconti, and afterward he'd addressed the Italian parliament. His grand dinner at the Palazzo del Quirinale with Mario Tonti, the president of Italy, the night before, had been filled with warmth and goodwill and the two leaders developed a bond almost immediately. By evening's end Harris had invited the Italian president to visit him at his ranch in the California wine country, and Tonti had enthusiastically accepted. That the relationship had developed as it had was important politically, because even as the Italian populace was wary of America's moves and intentions in the Middle East, Tonti had gone out of his way to show the president that he had a strong and dependable ally in Europe. This morning Prime Minister Visconti had assured Harris of the same. The support of both men was a crucial gain for his tour and all the more important after his more painful experiences in Paris and Berlin, and he was grateful for it. Yet it was Paris and Berlin, or rather the leaders of France and Germany, that still hung in his mind. He had dropped his idea of discussing the Jake Lowe-Dr. James Marshall problem with either Secretary of State Chaplin or Defense Secretary Langdon because he knew that if he did, it would become an overriding cause for worry, and the attention to it would take away the focus on their overall mission.

Besides, frightening and unsettling as it had been, it was still only conversation, and neither man was on hand to take it any further. Earlier that morning Lowe had flown on to Madrid to meet with staff members and the advance Secret Service team at the Hotel Ritz, where he would be staying. Marshall had remained behind in Rome to spend the rest of the day in conference with his Italian counterpart.

Harris sat back, fingered a glass of orange juice, and wondered what he had missed in his judgment of Lowe and Marshall that they could be seriously discussing things he would have thought were so alien to their natures. Then he remembered Jake Lowe taking a phone call from Tom Curran during the motorcade in Berlin and being told afterward of the murder of Caroline Parsons's physician, Lorraine Stephenson. He remembered thinking out loud about the very recent deaths of Mike Parsons, his son, and then Caroline, all three compounded by the murder of Caroline's doctor. He remembered turning to Jake Lowe and saying something like: "They are all dead over so short a time. What is going on?"