The Hadrian Memorandum

28

Marten stood up quickly. “It’s only a matter of time before they show up here. If I leave now, go out the back entrance the way we came in, you can deny it all. Tell them you met me on the plane from Bioko, we did a little flirting, and you followed me to Berlin for the fun of it. You had no idea I was going to meet with Theo Haas, let alone be around when he was killed. Moreover, you can describe the real killer to them. You know what he looked like as well as I do. Others had to have seen him, too, people the police may have already questioned and you can bring that up, it’ll give you credibility. You’re a wealthy American who sits on the board of a large Texas oil company. They’re not going to do much of anything to you, especially once you convince them you just got caught up in an unfortunate coincidence and have no idea where I’ve gone. And it’ll be the truth because you won’t.”

“It won’t work.” Anne was looking directly at him.

“Why? In ten seconds I’m out the door and vanished.”

“Not without me.”

Marten glared at her. “Don’t start that again, not now. Not with this Hauptkommissar Franck on the trail. You get caught with me, you’ll be locked up for as long as I am.”

“I want the photographs, Mr. Marten. I’ll take my chances. Besides, as I said, there may be a way out of this yet, but you’ll need me or it won’t happen.”

“How?”

“As my mother used to say, that’s for me to know and you to find out.”

Marten watched her carefully, then gave in. “Once again, I seem to be at your mercy.”

“Then let’s get to it.” Immediately she dug in her suitcase, pulled something out, and tossed it to him. “It’ll help cover you up. A little anyway.”

Marten caught it and looked at it-a Dallas Cowboys baseball cap.

He looked at her as if she were crazy. “This isn’t going to help.”

“It’s better than nothing, darling. Now collect your things, take a pee, and we’ll get the hell out of here.”

Abruptly Anne threw off her robe. Marten saw a flash of taut body, beautiful breasts, and pubic hair, and then she was pulling on underwear, jeans, sweater, and the jeans jacket and running shoes she’d worn earlier.

Three minutes later they were walking out the Hotel Adlon’s rear entrance, then turning onto Wilhelmstrasse in the direction of Unter den Linden and the Spree River. Marten wore the Dallas Cowboys cap and pulled his suitcase behind him like a tourist. Anne carried an over-the-shoulder bag taken from her luggage. In it were last-minute basics: clean underwear, toiletries, passport, credit cards, money, BlackBerry. Her suitcase had been intentionally left in the room with the rest of her clothes, making it look as if she fully expected to return.

7:07 P.M.

HOTEL ADLON KEMPINSKI, OFFICE OF THE CONCIERGE. 7:28 P.M.

“We have over three hundred rooms and seventy-eight suites. It is not possible to know the physical description of every guest.” Paul Stonner, the Hotel Adlon’s proud, dark-suited, bifocal-wearing concierge, stood across from the shaved-headed, six-foot-six Erster Kriminalhauptkommissar Emil Franck in his private office. With Franck were his colleagues Kommissars Gerhard Bohlen and Gertrude Prosser. Bohlen was forty-one, skeleton thin, deadly serious, and married. Prosser was thirty-eight, a sturdy, handsome blonde whose only marriage was, and always had been, to the department. Gerhard and Gertrude. Franck often referred to them as “the two Gs.” Both were top homicide investigators.

“Herr Stonner,” Franck said coldly, his coal-black eyes barely pinpoints in his head, “you are going to bring your employees in here, and we are going to do our best to find a match. Our man here will describe them exactly as he has to you and to us.”

Franck looked to fifty-year-old Karl Zeller, the white-haired taxi driver who had driven Marten and Anne Tidrow from the Hotel Mozart Superior and delivered them to the Adlon’s rear entrance, by his records, at precisely 6:02 P.M.

“We will be very happy to help as we can, Hauptkommissar,” Stonner said respectfully, “but how do you know these people were guests of the hotel?”

“We don’t, Herr Stonner, but we are going to find out.”

7:32 P.M.

The two walked quickly down Schiffbauerdamm, the roadway on the far side of the River Spree from Unter den Linden. Marten’s suitcase was long gone, weighted down with chunks of concrete taken from a construction Dumpster near the Reichstag and tossed into the river. His own essentials-passport, driver’s license, credit cards, cash, and the dark blue throwaway cell phone he’d used to call President Harris-he carried on his person.

7:34 P.M.

The river and city still glimmered in the warm glow of the long summer day. In a way the daylight helped because it enabled them to blend in with the tourists crowding the streets and cafés that sat on the quay above the Spree, where people could look out at the maze of tour boats plying the water. After sunset the crowds would lessen, making them more visible to the police who seemed to be everywhere-on street corners, on motorcycles, in patrol cars-in a massive search for the still-unnamed man whose blurred photograph Hauptkommissar Franck had shown on television.

In the half hour since they’d left the Adlon, Marten had said little, just turning this way and that at Anne’s direction. Clearly she knew the city, at least this part of it, and was seemingly intent on taking them to some destination in particular. Just where that was and who would be waiting when they arrived were questions that made him as uneasy as the two that remained from earlier: how she had known where he was staying in Berlin and where he’d gone when he went to meet with Theo Haas. And then there was the business with the shower before they’d left the Adlon and the phone call she’d made from behind its closed door. At this point they all troubled him. As if he didn’t have trouble enough.

“Where are we going?” he said abruptly.

“It’s not far.”

“Wherever it is, it’s taking too long. We’re giving the police too much time.”

“I said, it’s not far.”

“What’s not far? Bar, restaurant, another hotel, what?”

“A friend’s apartment.”

“What friend?”

“Just a friend.”

“The one you called when you went in to take a shower?”

“What do you mean?”

“The shower was an excuse. The real reason you went in there was to make a call without me hearing.”

“Darling,” she smiled, “I wanted to get cleaned up, nothing more.”

“Your BlackBerry was on the bed before you went in. It wasn’t there afterward.”

Anne’s smile faded. “Alright, I did make a call. It was to my friend. To help us.”

“Then why the secret?”

“It was personal. Do I have to explain everything?”

“Just get us there.”

“We-” She hesitated.

“We-what?”

“Have to wait.”

“For what?”

“She has to make arrangements.”

“Arrangements?”

“Yes. She’ll call me when it’s ready.”

“Who the hell is ‘she’?”

Anne’s eyes flashed with anger. “Understand something. The police are everywhere. There is no other place for us to go.”

Marten didn’t like it. Any of it. He pressed her hard. “Verbrechen des Jahrhunderts.”

“What?”

“Verbrechen des Jahrhunderts. Crime of the century. That’s what you translated from the television. You understand German. You know your way around the city. You had me followed from the airport. That’s how you knew where I was staying. You had somebody watching the hotel, telling you the moment I left it and which way I had gone. It’s how you found me in the park. Then with the police swarming all over you suddenly have to take a shower. And now we’re going to a ‘friend’s’. A woman who has to make ‘arrangements’ first. What kind of friend is she, darling, when everyone in the city is looking for me, and probably by now for you as well? You told me to stop playing games; now it’s your turn. You’re not just Striker Oil. You’re something else. Who? What?”

Ahead was Weidendamm Bridge where Friedrichstrasse crossed the river. Stairs led up to it.

“Take the stairs,” she said quietly.

“I asked you a question.”

Just then two Berlin policemen went by on motorcycles, slowing as they did. A half block later, they stopped and looked back, one of them speaking into a microphone mounted to his helmet. Abruptly Anne took Marten by the hand and pulled him around.

“Kiss me.” She looked into his eyes. “And act like you mean it. Do it now.”

Marten glanced at the police and then did. She kissed him back, long and hard.

The motorcycle cops watched, then rode off.

“The stairs,” she said again and steered him toward them

7:40 P.M.