The Machiavelli Covenant

by Allan Folsom

  THURSDAY

  APRIL 6

  22

  • 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?"

  "It's a tragic coincidence, Mr. President," Lowe had responded.

  "Is it?"

  "What else would it be?"

  Maybe Lowe was right; maybe it was a tragic coincidence. Then again, maybe it wasn't, especially not in light of the "assassination" business. Immediately he pressed the intercom button at his sleeve.

  "Yes, Mr. President," the voice of his chief of staff came back.

  "Tom, would you please ask Hap Daniels to step in here? I'd like to chat with him about procedures in Madrid."

  "Yes, sir."

  Five seconds later the door opened and his forty-three-year-old Secret Service detail leader entered.

  "You wanted to see me, Mr. President?"

  "Come in, Hap," Harris said. "Please close the door."

  23

  Nicholas Marten felt the aircraft bank slightly as the pilot swung them southeast, crossing the Tyrrhenian Sea toward the lower boot of Italy. Soon they would drop down over Sicily and begin their approach to Malta.

  At seven fifteen that morning his British Airways flight from Washington had touched down at London's Heathrow Airport. By eight he had retrieved his luggage and bought a ticket on Air Malta for a ten thirty flight that would get him to the Maltese capital of Valletta at three that afternoon. In between he had a cup of coffee and some poached eggs with marmalade toast, booked a room at Valletta's three-star Hotel Castille, and tried calling Peter Fadden in Washington to tell him what had happened with the police and that he was on his way to Malta. Fadden's cell phone had been answered by voice mail, so he'd left a brief message giving Fadden his cell phone number, then backed it up with a similar call to his Washington Post office, saying he'd try to reach him again later in the day. Then he'd waited for his flight and tried to put together the pieces of what had happened in Washington, the most curious of which was what the French writer and photojournalist Demi Picard had asked him outside the church just before the police arrived. Had Caroline mentioned "the witches" before she died?

  Witches?

  No, that wasn't quite it. She'd said "the witches."

  The same as Caroline had said. "The ca—"

  Whether she had been meaning to say "the committee" was still a guess, but it seemed more than reasonable if—and it was a big if—Dr. Merriman Foxx turned out to be not only "the whitehaired man" but also the "doctor" Lorraine Stephenson had so feared that she put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger in front of him.

  Merriman Foxx and Dr. Lorraine Stephenson aside, there was no doubt Caroline had said "the ca." Just as Demi Picard had said "the witches." Both had been plural, meaning there had been more than one person involved. And if Caroline had indeed been referring to a committee, she would have been talking about a group.

  • VALLETTA, MALTA, 3:30 P.M.

  Marten took a taxi from the airport to the Hotel Castille and checked into a comfortable third-floor room with a large window that gave him a striking view of the city's Grand Harbor and its massive stone fortress, St. Angelo, which jutted into the sea from an island
across from the city. The fortress had been built, his taxi driver told him on the way from the airport, in the sixteenth century at the behest of the Knights of St. John to protect the island from the invading Ottoman Turks. "It might have looked like the Knights of St. John versus the Turks," he'd said loudly and passionately. "But it was really West against East. Christianity versus Islam. The groundwork for today's terrorist devils was put down right here in Malta five hundred years ago."

  He was exaggerating of course, but with Marten's first viewing of the harbor fortifications from his hotel window came an immediate, even eerie, awareness of that past. Despite its oversimplicity, what the cabdriver had said might well be true; the great distrust between East and West had indeed been established centuries earlier on this tiny Mediterranean archipelago.

  * * *

  Jet-lagged but energized, Marten took a quick shower and shaved, then pulled on a light turtleneck sweater, fresh slacks, and a tweed sport coat, from the clothes he had so hastily packed when he'd left Manchester on the run to be with Caroline.

  Fifteen minutes later, a hotel-provided map of Valletta in his pocket, he was walking down Triq ir-Repubblika, or Republic Street, the city's main shopping venue, looking for Triq San Gwann, or St. John Street, and then number 200, which according to Peter Fadden was the home of Dr. Merriman Foxx.

  What he would do when he got there he'd worked out in London during his wait in the Air Malta passenger lounge. He'd found a cubicle with an Internet connection, plugged in his electronic notebook, then logged on and accessed the U.S. Congressional Record Web page. There he'd scrolled down to the Subcommittee on Intelligence and Counterterrorism Mike Parsons had been part of, then clicked on the list of its members and found the name of the committee's chairwoman: Representative Jane Dee Baker, a Democrat from Maine, who, as a further Internet search turned up, was at that moment part of a small contingent of congresspeople on a fact-finding tour of Iraq.

  If Merriman Foxx had testified for three days as Peter Fadden had said, he would be more than aware of who Congresswoman Baker was. Marten's plan was to call his residence, give his name as Nicholas Marten, a special aide to Representative Baker, and say there were three or four minor ambiguities in the hearing's transcript that the congresswoman would like clarified. Since he was in Europe and would be traveling through Malta anyway, the congresswoman would very much appreciate it if Dr. Foxx would give him a few moments so that the text could be finalized for the Congressional Record.

  It was a kind of boldness Marten knew was risky. There was every chance that he would get a firm "No, I'm sorry but my testimony has been completed" or that Foxx might first check with Baker's office in Washington to see if there was indeed a Nicholas Marten on her staff and if he had been given such an assignment. But as a former investigator, Marten was going on the belief that the scientist's reaction would be cordial. Cordial, as in guarded, as if he might still be under the committee's scrutiny. Or cordial, as in friendly, if some kind of cooperative venture was going on between himself and the committee and he didn't want to upset it. In either case, cordial enough to at least meet with him face-to-face. And when they met, Marten would begin to "cordially" feel him out for what he knew about Dr. Stephenson and about the illness and death of Caroline Parsons.

  Marten walked toward St. John's Square, where Republic Street and St. John Street crossed. He passed a small games and toys shop, another selling wine and spirits, and then under a colorful banner stretching overhead across Republic Street. A few paces more and he was at St. John's Square and in front of the massive Church of the Knights, the seventeenth-century Co-Cathedral of St. John. He had heard of its grand noble hall and the magnificent design within, but from the outside it looked more like a fortress than a church, and reminded him once more that Malta, especially Valletta, had been designed foremost as a citadel.

  St. John Street was hardly a street but rather a long climb of stone steps. No vehicles here, only pedestrians. It was now a little after five in the afternoon and the sun cut deep shadows across the stairs as he climbed them. His reason for coming here was simple; to find number 200 and hopefully get some sense of how Merriman Foxx lived—a glimpse of him would be a sheer bonus—before he returned to his hotel and telephoned him.

  One hundred fifty-two steps later he was there. Number 200 was similar to all of the buildings on the street, a four-story edifice with an enclosed overhanging balcony on each floor. Balconies that he was certain gave a clear view of the street below.

  Marten walked up another twenty steps, then turned back to study the building. Without going up to the front door and peering in, it was hard to tell if the four floors were part of one residence or were broken into single apartments on each floor. A lone residence might indicate Foxx was a man of some wealth—an investment of part of his alleged siphoned-off millions, maybe. An apartment on a single floor would be less definitive. The one thing that was certain was that anyone who lived here had to be at the very least ambulatory; the steep stone-step street itself proved that. It made him begin to wonder if, as a former military officer, Merriman Foxx may well have chosen this island domicile not only for its rich military history but because as he aged it would force him to stay in shape physically. It was a personal discipline he should not overlook when they met face-to-face and he began to question Foxx about Dr. Stephenson and Caroline Parsons.

  24

  On the other hand maybe he was jumping the gun by assuming Foxx was both the "doctor" and the "white-haired man." What if he wasn't? What if he was just a former army commander with white hair who had run a secret South African bioweapons program and then retired after the whole thing was dismantled? Someone who had never heard of Caroline Parsons or Lorraine Stephenson, had told the truth before a congressional committee, and was now back home to whatever his life in Malta was and happy to have everything else behind him?

  What then?

  Go back to England? Go back and go to work putting the finishing touches on the landscape drawings for the Banfield country estate northwest of Manchester? Get everything ready for the grading, the irrigation people, the nursery orders, and the planting crews? Go back and forget about what had happened to Caroline? Or to her husband and son? Or about the decapitation of the already dead Dr. Lorraine Stephenson?

  No, he'd forget none of it because it wouldn't come to that. Merriman Foxx had to be the doctor/white-haired man. He'd been in Washington from March 6th to the 29th, the period during which Mike Parsons and his son had died in the plane crash and when Caroline had become ill. He'd been the principal witness for the subcommittee Mike Parsons had been a member of. And he knew firsthand about the makeup and covert use of secret deadly pathogens.

  There was little doubt Foxx was the man he was after, but even if he was fortunate enough to get the face-to-face meeting with him why would Foxx tell him anything at all about what he was involved in? If Marten persisted and it got ugly Foxx might very well find a way to kill him. Conversely, if what Foxx was engaged in was far-reaching enough and somehow he forced him into a corner, it might be cause enough for Foxx to kill himself. A cyanide tablet under the tongue, or considering his professional background, something more ingenious, prepared long in advance in the event of such a circumstance.

  Peter Fadden had told Marten he was pursuing this emotionally, and he was right. It was why he was here. But now, in the shadow of Foxx's apartment building, he realized that what he had been thinking was true and that if he continued on that same path there was every chance either he or the good doctor would wind up dead, and in the process send Foxx's entire operation, whatever it was, underground. Furthermore, and what he should have thought about from the beginning, was that no matter what he uncovered he had no support structure to back him up. Even if he got Foxx to divulge everything, who was he going to turn to?

  If this was as potentially explosive as it seemed—the murder of a United States congressman and his son, and later his wife, followed by the decapitation
of his wife's doctor, all intertwined with a congressional subcommittee hearing on intelligence and counterterrorism—it was not something an expatriate landscape designer from England should be pursuing alone. That he had once been an LAPD homicide detective meant nothing; this was a national security issue, especially if it involved congressional-level Washington politics. So far he had no proof of anything. But a trail had opened up and Merriman Foxx was at the end of it. It meant that whatever Marten did and said when he met him had to be done with great care and self-control, and with all his personal feelings left out of it. His objective had to be wholly singular: to ascertain if Merriman Foxx was—or was not—the doctor/white-haired man. If he was, his next step would be to get hold of Peter Fadden and let him turn loose the one organization in Washington that would have no qualms about taking the investigation further—The Washington Post.

  • MADRID, WESTIN PALACE HOTEL, 7:30 P.M.

  "Hello, Victor." Richard's telephone voice was calm and soothing as always.

  "I'm glad to hear from you, Richard. I thought you were going to call me earlier." Victor picked up the remote and turned down the television, then moved to sit on the edge of the bed, where he had been resting until his cell phone had rung with Richard's call.

  "How is the hotel?"

  "Very nice."

  "Are they treating you well?"

  "Yes, thank you, Richard."

  "How was your walk through Atocha Station."

  "I—" Victor hesitated, unsure of how to respond.