Free The Machiavelli Covenant by Allan Folsom Page B

Why?"
    Marten took a deep breath and then asked, "Does he have white hair?"
    "What's that got to do with anything?"
    "Does he have white hair?" Marten was emphatic.

    Fadden raised his eyebrows. "Yeah. A lot of it. He's sixty years old and has a mop like Albert Einstein's."
    "My God," Marten breathed. Immediately the thought came. "Is he still here? Still in Washington?" he asked with urgency.
    "For chrissakes, I don't know."
    "Can you find when he first came to Washington? How long he was here?"
    "Why?"
    Marten stopped and took Fadden by the arm. "Can you find out where he is now and the day and date he came to Washington?"
    "Who the hell is he in this?"
    "I'm not sure, but I want to talk to him. Can you get that information for me?"
    "I do, and you go to see him, you're taking me with you."
    Marten's eyes glistened. Finally—maybe—he was onto something. "You find him, I'll take you with me. I promise."

18

    • ROME, 7 P.M.

    The presidential motorcade turned onto via Quirinale in twilight. President Harris could see the huge lighted edifice of the Palazzo del Quirinale, the official residence of the president of Italy, where he would spend the evening in the company of President Mario Tonti.
    Regardless of his failures and frustrations with the leaders of France and Germany, Harris was staying thecourse: the traveling salesman making the rounds of the major capitals of Europe, drumming up goodwill and calling for a new era of transatlantic unity, meeting those countries' leaders on their home soil, where the trees and gardens and neighborhoods were as dear to them as the same things were to him in America.
    With him in the presidential limousine were Secretary of State David Chaplin and Secretary of Defense Terrence Langdon, both of whom had been waiting when Air Force One landed at the Champino Military Airport outside Rome. These two men were a show of force and assurance: one to demonstrate that the United States was openly courting a better relationship with the entire European community; the other to make clear that the president was not there hat in hand, that he had his own definitive point of view, especially as it applied to terrorism, the Middle East, and countries covertly developing weapons of mass destruction, as well as other pressing issues—trade, protection of intellectual material, world health, and global warming. In all those things, Harris was realistic but also politically and economically conservative, at least as conservative as the man he had succeeded in office, the late President Charles Cabot.
    Not forgotten in all this necessary political "forward motion" was the incident aboard Air Force One on the flight from Berlin. He could still feel the numbing chill of Dr. James Marshall's proposal to assassinate the president of France and the chancellor of Germany.
To be replaced with leaders we can trust, now and in the future
. Followed by Jake Lowe's bold statement,
There are such people, Mr. President
. And then Marshall's
It can be done, sir, and rather quickly. You'd be surprised
.
    These were men he'd trusted for years. Both had been instrumental in his election. Yet in the context of whathad happened it almost seemed as if they were people he'd never met before, strangers with a dark agenda all their own, urging him to take part in it. That he had fiercely refused was one thing, but that it had been proposed at all troubled him deeply. And the way it had been left—with both men looking at him almost in contempt, and Marshall's last words still echoing in his ears,
I think we understand your position, Mr. President
—made him think that, despite his outright refusal, in their minds their initiative was far from dead. It frightened him. There was no other way to put it. He'd thought he should bring it up with David Chaplin and Terrence Langdon on the way here, but both secretaries were filling him in on the meetings they had come from, and to bring up something so ominous and far-reaching