The Hadrian Memorandum

100

PORTELA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT. 8:42 A.M.

Carlos Branco waited at the bottom of the steps as Congressman Joe Ryder and his personal RSO detail, agents Chuck Birns and Tim Grant, came down the steps of their Gulfstream 200 and stepped onto Lisbon soil. Grant and Birns, Branco knew, had been assigned to Ryder for the past fifteen months as his sworn protectors when he traveled outside of the United States, and he trusted them completely. That meant they had a long-standing, interlocking loyalty and made them people he might well have trouble wresting away from the congressman when the time came and he tried to pull the entire RSO detail back in order to give Conor White and his gunmen singular access to their targets.

“RSO Special Agent Anibal Da Costa, Congressman,” Branco said smartly as he introduced himself. “Welcome to Lisbon, sir. This way, gentlemen, please.”

Immediately he turned and led them toward a black Chevy Suburban SUV parked on the tarmac twenty feet away where two more RSO agents waited, the rest of the Lisbon embassy detail.

Moments later they were driving past security gates and heading into the city, taking the same route Branco had used barely twelve hours earlier when he’d brought Conor White and his men in from the same airport.

He’d been right when he told White that Marten would not recognize him the next time they met. The clean-shaven, dark-haired man in the Hawaiian shirt and blue jeans he’d seen last night in the Hotel Lisboa Chiado now wore a tailored black suit, white shirt, and tie, and had gray hair and a neatly trimmed full beard of the same color. Moreover, his natural hazel-green eyes were now covered by deep blue contact lenses, a further safeguard in the event Marten had been paying that much attention; which he might well have been, considering what he had done to the men in the blue Jaguar.

That thought, coupled with the presence of Congressman Ryder sitting in the seat behind him now, reminded him of the real-politik of the situation, the cold truth of why he had been brought aboard as a “painter” to set things up for White. Anne Tidrow, Ryder, and Marten, each in his or her own way, and for reasons unknown to him and possibly even COS Moyer, had become exceedingly dangerous to the CIA and had to be treated as such. Ryder’s personal RSO detail had to be looked at that way, too. It was why he had recruited the people he had: five former members of the Portuguese army Batalhão de Comandos, counterguerrilla special forces commandos who would shadow Anne and Marten the moment they left the building on Rua do Almada to wherever he and his RSO detail brought Ryder to meet them. Meaning they would have both parties covered from start to finish with neither aware of it and giving them little or no chance for escape. And if, at the crucial moment, Birns and Grant, Ryder’s RSO people, attempted to interfere with his pullback of the entire RSO detail, his commandos would cut them to pieces-dedicated State Department employees regrettably caught in a crossfire between his own RSO detail and assailants unknown-in the process leaving Anne and Marten and Joe Ryder to the mercy of Conor White and the men he had brought with him.

FOUR SEASONS HOTEL RITZ. 9:30 A.M.

Branco opened the door to Ryder’s seventh-floor suite, and the entourage entered. Birns and Grant went in first, giving the elegantly appointed quarters careful inspection. They would find nothing out of the ordinary. The suite had been electronically swept and cleared by the Lisbon RSO detail more than two hours earlier. Everything was clean. Perfect. Everything except for the tiny listening devices Branco had installed himself when he’d come there alone at six fifteen, bugging the landline telephones and Internet connections, devices he’d deliberately kept the Lisbon RSO people from finding then and kept Birns and Grant from discovering now. Ryder’s personal cell phone activity and that of Birns and Grant had been meticulously monitored by a private communications contractor CIA COS Moyer had employed from the moment the congressman’s plane entered the Lisbon cell phone grid.

Their inspection completed, Birns nodded to Ryder, who in turn looked to Branco.

“Thank you. I want you to know we appreciate the special attention.”

“We enjoy our work, sir.” Branco smiled.

“I know you do. Now, I’m going to work out some travel fatigue with a quick swim in the hotel pool, then come back to the room and attend to some business. I’ll need a car about eleven thirty. I’m having lunch with an old friend.”

“Where, sir?”

“Café Hitchcock. In the Alfama district. You know it?”

“Yes, sir. It’s less than a ten-minute drive from here.”

“Thank you, Agent Da Costa.”

“The pleasure is ours, sir.”

With that Branco left, taking his two Lisbon RSO agents with him.

Ryder watched the door close behind them, then looked to Grant and Birns, who were booked into the connecting room. “I’m going down to the pool. Get yourselves settled, then come down to meet me.”

“Best you wait for us, sir,” Grant said. “We’ll escort you.”

“This is the Ritz, fellas, not a bunker in Iraq. But thanks, I’ll wait.”

“Give us a couple of minutes.”

With that they opened the door and went into the adjoining room.

Ryder took a breath and walked over to the window to look out over the city’s Eduardo VII Park, and the Marquês de Pombal roundabout at the top of the Avenida da Liberdade at the edge of it. Every tree and blade of grass sparkled joyfully in the morning sun, making the city itself, despite the circumstances at hand, seem clean and wonderfully refreshed from the rain of the night before.

President Harris had reached him just before his plane entered Lisbon airspace. The first thing he’d asked was if Ryder completely trusted his own RSO detail, to which he’d answered in the affirmative. The second was not a question but a warning: Trust no one from the Lisbon embassy. Assume your movements are being watched, that your room is bugged and all of your phones monitored, cells included. Then:

“Do not try to contact Marten. You’ll have to take your own RSO people into your confidence and just hope to hell they’re not professionally, psychologically, or in any other way beholden to the RSO/Lisbon people. You will need to get out of your hotel quickly and unseen. Your people should be able to help you do it. Now,” he said, “write this down,” and Ryder had.

“You are to meet Marten and Anne Tidrow at the Hospital da Universidade, University Hospital, 25 Rua Serpa Pinto at eleven local time. Come in the rear entrance. A large, balding man named Mário Gama, the hospital’s director of security, will be behind the desk. Introduce yourself as John Ferguson of the American Insurance Company and say you are there to meet Catarina Silva, the accounts receivable director. He’ll take you to where Marten and Anne are. At eleven fifteen a laundry truck will meet the three of you and your RSO detail outside the same entrance you came in. Go directly to the airport, get on your plane, and get the hell out of there.” The president had been emphatic, the tenor of his voice emphasizing both the danger and the significance of what they were attempting.

“Anne and Marten will be carrying very important information, so the whole thing, once you meet them, has to be bang, bang, bang. If you run into trouble and can’t make it on time, Marten will wait until eleven thirty. If you don’t show up, if it doesn’t work at all, then repeat everything at the exact same time tomorrow. Lastly, tell the embassy RSO people you’re meeting an old friend for lunch and that you will need a car at eleven thirty. The place is the Café Hitchcock in the Alfama district. It’s well away from the area where the hospital is. That will have them thinking you’re staying in your room until then, and they’ll stand down, for a little while anyway, which hopefully will be long enough for you to get out of the hotel and to Marten.”

With that he’d wished him well and signed off quickly. He’d sounded like he felt he’d already spoken too long and was worried-calling as he had at nearly three o’clock in the morning Washington time-that someone from his Secret Service detail would come into his room to make certain he was alright and then set a wave of gossip rolling with speculation about who he had been talking to and why.

“Ready to go down to the pool, sir?” Agent Grant stood in the doorway to the adjoining room.

“You bet. Right now.”

9:37 A.M.