The Hadrian Memorandum

EPILOGUE

MANCHESTER, ENGLAND.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22. 10:35 A.M.

Marten stood with a three-man survey team as they mapped the landscape of a forty-acre parcel of forest and meadow a private organization wished to turn into a park as a gift to the city. The day was sunny and warm with big puffy clouds overhead. The surveyors moved off and down a long grade, carrying their transits, tripods, bipods, levels, and other equipment, giving him a moment alone. As he watched them he realized there was really no need for him to be there at all. They were measuring raw land, nothing more. They certainly didn’t need a landscape architect looking over their shoulder; his work would come after theirs was completed and he had their drawings. It made him realize, too, that he had been pretty much doing this kind of thing since he’d come back from New Hampshire. Keeping inordinately busy. Working, then going home to work some more, meticulously poring over everything he had done that day and planning for the next, and on top of it sketching out ways the firm might expand into other areas of the new “greening” world.

He saw women from time to time and enjoyed their company, but with no real enthusiasm for a lasting relationship. One time Lady Clementine Simpson had come up from London to visit old friends from her days there as a university professor. She’d abruptly awakened him in the middle of the night with a sharp knock on the door, the same as she had several years before when she’d suddenly arrived to announce that her marriage was over and ask if she could spend the night. Two days later she went back to London; then she and her husband reconciled and they returned to Japan where he was still the British ambassador. This time she not only woke him but brought the proud news that she was pregnant. Discussion of that and its consequences lasted until five in the morning, when she’d suddenly stood up, kissed him, and told him she still loved him and probably should have married him, then abruptly left to catch the early train back to London.

Now, as he watched the surveyors set up near the bottom of the hill, he let his thoughts drift back to his conversation with President Harris in the private library at the heavily guarded farmhouse in New Hampshire.

“I guaranteed the Russian agent, Yuri Kovalenko, that the Bioko photographs would never be released, especially not to Washington’s security agencies, where, for any number of reasons, they might be leaked. If they were, he would be put in a very compromising position that could cost him his life. The only reason I’m not ashes in an urn somewhere is because of him. I gave him my word because I trusted you would back me up, not just because of our relationship but because I knew you were concerned the Russians might circulate the CIA video and wouldn’t want the photographs released, either. Without them there’s no evidence that Striker or Hadrian or SimCo was involved in the war, meaning the video alone would be nothing more than a clandestine record of the atrocities Tiombe practiced against his own people and of little use for either propaganda or blackmail.”

He remembered President Harris listening carefully and then telling him that he would do everything he could to see that Kovalenko’s life and reputation were not put in jeopardy but that he could not guarantee the photographs would not be brought forth if the matter went to trial. Marten told the president he was aware of that and in the pause that followed offered his suggestion.

“Mr. President,” he’d said, “you want the backing of Abba and his people. This other stuff comes out, General Mariano, the memorandum-all or part of it-and suddenly Abba’s not a friend but an enemy. World opinion of you and the U.S. will be ugly, maybe even provoke violence, and you’ll have the Russians and probably the Chinese stepping all over themselves to secure the Bioko leases. All the things you worried about when I told you about the photographs in the first place. Yes, you can go to trial against Striker and Hadrian and SimCo or-”

“Or what? Just forget about it? Is that your idea?”

“Hear me out.”

“Go ahead.”

“Somebody takes Hadrian’s Loyal Truex aside and strongly recommends that he get out of the protective security business. Maybe announce that the company made mistakes in Iraq and has decided to change its name and go in a different direction. As for Striker, the real heavy there was Sy Wirth, and he’s dead. Anne’s father built the business from the ground up, and she wants to shed its tarnished image with Hadrian. She’s been in and around the oil business her entire life. Give her the reins. Let her run the company.”

“And do what?”

“Equatorial Guinea is a tiny, impoverished country that’s been stomped into the ground by Tiombe and dictators before him. Abba appears to be some kind of democratic savior, but he has nothing to work with, so the best he can do is try to heal the misery the war has left behind, something that can take years to achieve, if it can ever be done at all. So let Striker stay there and exploit the Bioko field with Anne as boss and with the caveat the company give Abba’s government eighty percent of the gross oil revenue after costs are realized. And with a caveat to Abba that the money be used for infrastructure-clean water systems, sewage treatment plants, schools, hospitals, paved roads, things like that, and with a chunk of it put into the development of new businesses. Maybe even arrange for a third party to oversee the transfer and allocation of funds to make sure they go where they’re supposed to. You and I both know that sooner or later the idea of oil as a major energy source is going to slide into history, and you can’t have an entire country lifted up from nothing to something approaching a decent life that is wholly dependent on something that is going to vanish and leave them with nothing.

“I may sound like a dreamer, but what I’m suggesting can work. I was there. I saw those people and the conditions they live under. Poverty and abuse by Tiombe and his regime is the reason why Abba came to power and why all the disparate tribes united behind him. He gave them hope and they followed, but now Tiombe is gone and the war is over. As well-intentioned as Abba might be, he’s got to deliver on that hope or he’ll have a tribal backlash on his hands with people wondering what they did all this for and looking for a new leader.

“The size of the country makes it manageable. The oil is there. Striker has its equipment and people in place. Everything’s ready to go. Unless Abba’s a fool, and you don’t seem to think he is, he’ll be more than happy to accept his eighty percent, caveats and all, because it gives him the chance to prove he was the right man all along and the opportunity to make his country look like a model for other emerging nations. More than that, if it’s done right, and Anne can certainly do it, Striker Oil will be seen as a company that cares with its checkbook about the people and places where it operates, and the image of a greedy American corporation elbowing its way into the riches of third world countries like Equatorial Guinea will slowly begin to fade. Geopolitical suspicions about other motives can be left to the pundits.”

Marten remembered sitting in that little den of a library waiting for the president to dismiss everything he’d said. But he didn’t. Instead he smiled, finished his drink, and stood up. “Cousin,” he said, “I think you have the makings of a true politician.” With that he crossed to the door and was gone.

“Mr. Marten, we need you for a few moments.” Marten’s musings were suddenly broken by one of the survey crew coming up the hill toward him.

“Sure,” he said and followed the man back down the hill to where the others waited. He looked out over the land as he went-the rolling meadows, the great copses of wood, the clouds rolling overhead. Autumn was in the air. Fresh and sweet. This was where he wanted to be. This was what gave him life. He’d had enough blood and violence to last a dozen lifetimes. He’d killed three men in Lisbon, four if you counted the motorcycle rider, and, much to his horror, had done it well and without remorse.

“I think you’re one of those people trouble follows around,” Marita had said. Well, maybe so, but now it was resolutely in the past and he vowed it would remain that way for the rest of his life.

THE SQUIRE CROSS PUB, OXFORD STREET. 7:30 P.M.

Marten ordered a pint of Banks & Taylor Golden Fox ale and his favorite chicken curry with balsamic rice, naan bread, and mango chutney. The food had come, but he hadn’t touched it. Instead he was working on his third Banks & Taylor.

He’d read the letter three times when he’d gotten home and twice more here. Now he picked it up again. It was a copy of a correspondence that had arrived in the day’s mail and been sent to him from Moscow with no return address. A scrawled note had accompanied it.

See International Herald Tribune, dated Monday, June 7,bottom of page one.

That had been all. Just the copy of the letter and the note. There was no need to wonder who’d sent it. Kovalenko.

The letter itself was brief and hugely personal and, to Marten at least, very moving. It had been sent, most ironically, in the form of a memo and dated a day before the incident at the Rossio Metro station.

TO: Colin Conor White

FROM: EKR

Dated: 4 June

Dear Son,

I began this note many times over the years, and each time I crumbled it up and threw it away out of shame and embarrassment and perhaps the fear that my wife and children would find out.

Finally I came to realize that the matter was my own, not theirs, and that I am getting on. I would not want to leave this life without having reached out to you to tell you how very proud I am of your accomplishments and how sorry I am not to have accepted your kind invitation to stand alongside you when you received the VC.

I know that you have tried numerous times to contact me in one way or another. That I did not respond is nothing more than a sad showing of personal weakness. If you would still be open to it, I would very much like us to meet, if to do nothing more than shake hands and perhaps share a pint and get to know each other as best we might. Since I have no idea where you are or where your current travels have taken you, I have sent this on to your old SAS regiment with the request that it be forwarded to you. I have also left word with my private secretary to immediately put us in touch, should you respond. You would, of course, know the phone number. By mail: House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA.

I very much look forward to your response and, of course, to seeing you.

Your loving father,EKR

Following Kovalenko’s directive that he see the Monday, June 7, edition of the International Herald Tribune, bottom of page one. Marten had accessed the paper’s Web site and brought up the edition of the day in question, then quickly scrolled to the bottom of the first page, where he saw the photograph of a distinguished, silver-haired man. Above it was the caption

SIR EDWARD KERCHER RAINES, DECORATED BRITISHWAR HERO, LONGTIME MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT,DEAD AT 75.

There was no need to read the story; the caption told it all, its tragic revelation made all the more chilling when one knew it had been the paper clutched in Conor White’s hand as he sat motionless in the dim light of the subway kiosk. It was what he was referring to when he’d looked to Marten and said “He’s dead.”

Clearly, Raines was a father he’d never met but very much wanted to. In that moment when he’d slipped into the kiosk, prepared to use it as a blind from which to ambush Marten, he must have inadvertently seen the newspaper and been instantly shattered. There was little doubt it was the reason he had acted as he had.

Marten left the Squire Cross Pub and walked slowly back to his apartment. The night was crisp and clear, the moon nearly full. People were out, the traffic heavy, the air filled with the sounds of the city. He paid little attention to any of it. His thoughts were on Conor White, and he wondered if he’d invested his entire life, physically and emotionally, in trying to gain his father’s recognition; if he had chosen the career he had for no other reason than to prove himself worthy. Then, like that-a photograph and a caption in a newspaper-any possibility of it ever happening had been stripped away. The emotional blow would have been staggering, his life suddenly become meaningless. The grand heartbreak of it was that he had died never knowing his father’s note of reconciliation was in the mail.

Walking on he thought how important a figure Anne’s father had been in her life. The difference was, they had been able to share it. Some of the journey, especially that surrounding her mother’s illness and death and later her father’s, had been rough. Still, some big portion of their lives had been rich and filled with adventure and joy and love.

For the first time in years, Marten thought of his own father. Not the caring, loving adoptive father he and Rebecca had grown up with in California but his birth father. He wondered if he was still alive and, if so, where. Who he was. What he had done for a living. How old he would be. His birth mother, he knew, had died from a heart ailment only weeks after he’d been born. But his birth father, even with open public records, he’d been able to find nothing about. The name he’d given when he put him up for adoption, James Bergen, turned out to have been false, as was the address where he said he lived. Why he had lied about those things and why he had given him up were questions that would haunt him forever.

Marten turned down Liverpool Road. His apartment was nearby, but he chose instead to take the long way to it and walk along the river. The lights and life of the city reflected off its surface, the rising moon giving it an almost magical silver shimmer. For a moment he thought of the young curly-haired man who had murdered Theo Haas. His gut feeling, as he’d chased him toward the Brandenburg Gate, had been right-that he was not a professional killer but a madman. Or, in retrospect, an overzealous critic. Disliking a book or play or film is one thing. Murdering the writer because of it, quite another.

A boat moved slowly past, its wake breaking the smoothness of the river’s surface and sending ribbons of moonglow rippling across it. He thought now of Anne and their last moments together in New Hampshire. They had left the farmhouse and gone to walk in the woods to be alone. President Harris and Congressman Ryder had left hours before, and Attorney General Kotteras was preparing to leave then, as they would within the hour. His suggestion to the president, that in lieu of prosecution Anne be allowed to take over the company and continue to develop the Bioko field with the bulk of the profits going to the people of Equatorial Guinea, had been received with merit and discussed at length between the parties. But no final decision had been made. Nor had the topic been brought up on their walk.

She could have asked him about his shooting to death of the men in Lisbon and his rather remarkable ability with firearms. Or about his warning to the drug pusher in Berlin that he was an L.A. cop. Or how he had come to be so close a confidant of the president of the United States. But she hadn’t. In fact, little had been said at all. They simply walked under gray skies through the still-damp woods, glad to be alive and in each other’s company. More than once they stopped and hugged and looked into each other’s eyes. “I love you,” one or the other might have said, but neither did. That she was a few years older than he made no difference. Their worlds were far removed and wholly different, yet they had shared more in a few short days than most people would in a lifetime. Nonetheless it was time to move on and, in doing so, best to leave some things unsaid.

It was just after nine when he climbed the stairs to his apartment on Water Street. The phone was ringing as he came in the door and he picked up.

“Mr. Nicholas Marten?” a female voice with a Manchester accent asked.

“Yes.”

“This is the H &H Delivery Service. We have a parcel for you that is perishable. Will you be home in the next hour?”

“I will, yes. Thank you,” he said without thinking and hung up.

He glanced once more at the letter from Conor White’s father, then put it away. As he did, the thought suddenly struck-what was the H &H Delivery Service? He’d never heard of it. Furthermore who delivered something “perishable” after nine o’clock at night?

In the next moment his doorbell rang.

“Christ!” he breathed. The image of Carlos Branco flashed across his mind. Maybe the CIA had told him to go back and finish the job. Whoever it was had probably been outside watching, waiting for him to return, then, when he did, rang him up to make sure he had gone to his apartment and not someone else’s. The doorbell chimed again. He wished to hell he still had the Glock. In its stead he picked up a baseball bat he’d bought in New Hampshire as a kind of nostalgic souvenir of the American life that still resonated in his soul, turned out the light and went to the door. He waited a moment then carefully opened it and peered out. There was no one there. The stairs were directly across, and he could hear someone rushing down them. Immediately he went to the balustrade and looked over the side. He glimpsed a hand on the lower railing, and then the front door opened and whoever it was went out. Just then he heard a sharp cry behind him. He whirled.

What he saw was a big wicker basket padded with a dark green blanket. In the center of it, its face poking over the side, eyes brown as the richest soil, its coat as black as shining coal, was a Newfoundland puppy. Eight, nine weeks old at most.

It was love at first sight for both, and they stared at each other unmoving and unblinking for a long time. Then Marten put down the bat and picked up the dog, holding it above his head, all the while grinning from ear to ear. The pup was a male, and he could feel its strength as it struggled in his grip. He brought it close and got a big, wet, sloppy doggy kiss for his trouble. Then he saw the tag around its neck and dropped to one knee to read it.

Bruno wanted you to have the pick of his first litter.He knew you’d make a great dad.

There was no signature.

Bruno Junior under his arm, he went back into the apartment to look out the window, hoping to see who’d left it. There was nothing but the glistening river and the lights of the city. He grinned again, wider this time if that were possible. There was only one person it could have been. Only one person with the skill and humor to have pulled off the perfect Manchester accent over the phone without ever before having been in the city. Only one person who had ridden beside him in Stump Logan’s ancient VW bus from Praia da Rocha to Lisbon when Bruno the Elder tried to climb into his lap to comfort him. Only one person with the caring and sensitivity to know he just might need a pal.

Anne.

Marten reached down and rubbed Bruno’s head. The puppy looked up at him the way his father, Bruno the Elder had, as if he sensed everything that was going on inside him. It was then he realized he had tears in his eyes. They were tears for the victims of violence and injustice he had seen every day of his life on the LAPD, and later in France and Russia and Spain. Tears for the awfulness of what had happened in Equatorial Guinea, for the people he had seen and met there, and on his voyage since. All he could do now was breathe-in the sweet innocence of the puppy in his arms and know the tears came from his heart.

“I weep for them,” he said aloud. “I weep for us all.”