The Machiavelli Covenant Read Free

realized the little she had told him had come in two sections, one quite separate from the other. The first had come in snippets: that she was originally to have been on the ill-fated plane with her husband and son but a last-minute change of plans brought her back to Washington a day earlier; what had happened at her home after the funerals; and finally what she had told him when she'd called him in England, saying she was dying from a staph infection caused by a strain of untreatable bacteria that she was certain had been given to her deliberately. "The . . . ca"—what she'd started to saywhen he'd asked her to explain it, and who the "they" were she was referring to, he had no idea.
    The second section had come from utterances she'd made in her sleep. Most had been everyday things, calling out the names of her husband, "Mike," or her son "Charlie," or her sister "Katy," or saying things like "Charlie, please turn down the TV" or "The class is Tuesday." But she'd said other things too. These had seemingly been aimed at her husband and were filled with alarm or fear or both. "Mike, what is it?" Or "You're frightened. I can see it!" Or "Why won't you tell me what it is?" Or "It's the others, isn't it?" And then later, a sudden fearful blurting—"I don't like the white-haired man."
    That part he was familiar with because it was a piece of the story she had told him when she'd called him in Manchester and asked him to come.
    "The fever came less than a day after I woke up in the clinic," she'd said. "It got worse and they did tests. A white-haired man came, they said he was a specialist but I didn't like him. Everything about him frightened me. The way he stared at me. The way he touched my face and my legs with his long, hideous fingers; and that horrid thumb with its tiny balled cross. I asked him why he was there and what he was doing but he never answered. Later they discovered I had some kind of staph infection in the bone of my right leg. They tried to treat it with antibiotics. But they didn't work. Nothing worked."

    Marten walked on. The rain came down harder but he barely noticed. His entire focus was Caroline. They had met in high school and entered the same college certainthey would marry and have children and be together for the rest of their lives. And then she had gone away for the summer and met a young lawyer named Mike Parsons. After that, his life and hers changed forever. But as deep as his hurt, as badly as he had been wounded, his love for her never diminished. In time he and Mike became friends, and he told Mike what Caroline and only a few others knew—who he really was and why he had been forced to leave his job as a homicide detective in the Los Angeles Police Department and move to the north of England to live under an assumed identity as a landscape architect.
    He wished now he had gone to the funeral of her husband and son as he'd wanted to. Because if he had he would have been there when she'd broken down and when Dr. Stephenson had come. But he hadn't, and that had been Caroline's doing. She had told him she was surrounded by friends and that her sister and husband were coming from their home in Hawaii, and that, considering the danger surrounding his own situation, it was better he stayed where he was. They would get together later, she'd told him. Later, when things had quieted down. She'd sounded alright then. Shaken maybe, but alright, and with the inner strength to carry on that she'd always had. And then all this had happened.
    God, how he had loved her. How he still loved her. How he would always love her.
    He walked on thinking only that. Finally, he became aware of the rain and realized he was nearly soaked through. He knew he had to find his way back to his hotel and looked around trying to get his bearings. That was when he saw it. A lighted edifice in the distance. A structure embedded in his memory from childhood,from history, from newspapers, from television, from movies, from