“Then give me something concrete.”

“Wish I could. It’s just the little things that all add up. Meetings the VP has avoided that a candidate would not. Pissing off people whom he’s going to need. Unconcerned with the party. Nothing overt. Little things that a political junkie like me would notice. There’s only a few of us on the inside who would even be privy to these things. These men keep things close.”

“Is Brent Green one of those men?”

“I have no idea. Brent’s a strange one. The outsider to everyone. I tried to push him yesterday. Threatened him. But he didn’t rattle. I wanted to see how he’d react. Then when you appeared in my house and found that book, I knew you had to be my ally.”

“You may have chosen wrong, Larry. I don’t believe a word you say. Killing a president is not easy.”

“I don’t know about that. Every presidential assassin, whether actual or would-be, was either deranged, loony, or lucky. Imagine what professionals could do.”

He had a point there.

“Where are those flash drives?” he asked.

“I have them.”

“I hope so, because if anyone else does we’re in trouble. They’ll know I’m on to them. Me recording those conversations with the VP’s chief of staff would be impossible to explain. I need those back, Stephanie.”

“Not going to happen. I have a suggestion, Larry. Why don’t you just turn yourself in, confess to bribing Congress, and ask for federal protection? Then you can spout all this bullshit to anyone who’ll listen.”

He sat back in his chair. “You know, I thought for once you and I might have a civil conversation. But no, you want to be a smug-ass. I did what I had to, Stephanie, because that’s what the president wanted.”

Now she was interested.

“He knew what you were doing with Congress?”

“How else do you think my stock rose so fast in the White House? He wanted things passed and I made sure that happened. This president has been successful in Congress, which also explains how he easily managed a second term.”

“You have proof of his involvement?”

“Like I taped Daniels? No. Just reality, Stephanie. Somebody has to make things happen. It’s the way of the world. I’m Daniels’s guy. I know it, and he knows it.”

She glanced over at Cassiopeia and recalled what the other woman had said on the way over. They truly did not know who to trust, including the president.

Daley stood from the table and tossed down a couple of dollars for the tip. “The other day you and Green thought this was all about Daniels’s legacy. I told you what you wanted to hear to rock you to sleep.” Daley shook his head. “This is about Daniels continuing to breathe. You’re a waste of time. I’ll handle this another way.”

MALONE LED THE WAY UP THE GAUNT ESCARPMENT. EAGLES and buzzards patrolled overhead. The golden sunlight penetrated his brain and suffused his sweaty body. A light wash of rock littered the trail, the parched topsoil a loamy deposit of sand and silt.

He followed the serpentine path to the top, where three massive boulders had long ago toppled and created a tunnel across the crown. Fine dust, sounding like water splashing, rained off the stones. Despite the sun, the corridor was cool. He welcomed the shade. The other side loomed thirty feet away.

Ahead, he suddenly spotted a flash of red.

“You see that?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Pam said.

They stopped and watched as it happened again.

Then he realized what was occurring. The noonday sun, as it found gaps between the three fallen stones, played itself off the red granite and colored the tunnel crimson.

Interesting phenomenon.

See the endless coil of the serpent red with anger.

“Apparently,” he said, “there’s lots of angry red serpents around here.”

Halfway through he noticed words etched into the granite. He stopped and read the Latin, translating out loud.

“Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.” He knew the passage. “From Exodus. What God said to Moses from the Burning Bush.”

“Is this where that happened?” Pam asked.

“No one knows. The mountain about twenty miles south of here, Jebel Musa, is accepted by all three religions as the place. But who knows?”

At the tunnel’s end a sudden blaze of warmth embraced him, and he stared out into a curving farsh dotted with cypress trees. Soft white clouds chased one another, like tumbleweeds, across the clear sky. His eyes slit lizardlike against the glare.

Pressed against the face of the far mound, tucked into an angle of stupendous cliffs, arose walls and buildings that strained against one another as if they were part of the rock. Their colors-yellow, brown, and white-merged like camouflage. Watchtowers seemed to be floating. Slim green cones of cypresses added contrast to burnt-orange roof tiles. No real logic prevailed as to size and shape. The assemblage reminded Malone of the anarchic charm of a hillside Italian fishing village.

“A monastery?” Pam asked him.

“The map indicated that there are three in this region. None is a great secret.”

A path of boulder steps led the way down. The risers descended steeply, grouped three together between sloping stretches of smooth rock. At the bottom another path traversed the farsh, past a small lake nestled among the cypresses, and zigzagged up to the monastery’s entrance.

“This is the place.”

STEPHANIE WATCHED AS DALEY LEFT THE RESTAURANT. CASSIOPEIA came over, sat at the table, and asked, “Anything useful?”

“He says that Daniels knew everything he was doing.”

“What else could he say?”

“Daley never mentioned that we were at Camp David last night.”

“Nobody saw us but those agents and Daniels.”

Which was right. They’d slept in the cabin alone with two agents outside. Food had been in the oven waiting when they’d awoken. Daniels himself had called and told them to arrange the meeting with Daley. So Daley either didn’t know or refused to say.

“Why would the president want us to meet with him, knowing Daley might contradict what he’s told us?” she asked, more to herself than Cassiopeia.

“Add that question to the list.”

She watched through the front glass as Daley trudged through the gravelly parking lot toward his Land Rover. She’d never liked the man. When she’d finally confirmed that he was dirty, nothing had pleased her more.

Now she wasn’t so sure.

Daley found his car at the far side of the lot and climbed inside.

They needed to leave, too. Time to find Brent Green and see what he’d learned. Daniels had not mentioned them talking with Green, but she thought it best.

Particularly now.

An explosion rocked the building.

Her initial shock was replaced with an awareness that the restaurant was intact. Loud voices and a few screams subsided as others, too, began to realize that the building was still there.

Everything was fine.

Except outside.

She stared through the glass and saw Larry Daley’s Land Rover being consumed by flames.