The Hadrian Memorandum

31

BERLIN. STILL FRIDAY, JUNE 4. 8:30 P.M.

The tour boat Monbijou had left the landing at 8:02, motored up the Spree to a turning point, and was now headed back into a city beginning to come alive for the night. The initial fears Anne and Marten had had about being seated on the upper deck and therefore open to view from shore had been quieted by the sheer number of other passengers surrounding them, easily eighty in all plus two harried, white-jacketed waiters rushing back and forth to the lower deck to retrieve drinks and snacks in an attempt to keep the topsiders happy. If much of Berlin had been psychologically pained by the murder of Theo Haas, that mood wasn’t evident here. In all probability that was because most of the passengers were English-speaking foreigners unaware of the emotional magnitude of the crime and its effect on the city.

Still, Marten was concerned, chiefly about the people seated nearby. He was afraid they might have seen his picture on television or be getting fresh information from the cell phones and other electronic gadgets seemingly everyone had despite the fact they had come on board to relax and enjoy the sights. Yet, so far at least, none had even looked his way, leading him to think that maybe Anne hadn’t been as foolish as he thought when she’d tossed him the Dallas Cowboys baseball cap and told him to put it on.

The public aside, or even the police who might be watching through field glasses from the embankment as they passed, the thing that troubled him most was Anne herself. The questions he’d put to her earlier-who she really was and what her motivations were-remained unanswered, primarily because they were in public and trying to keep a low profile. So he’d let it go, at least for now.

For a time he’d simply watched the city as they passed by and thought about what he would do next, a sticky problem in itself because he both needed her and wanted to get rid of her at the same time. Then her BlackBerry had sounded. She’d answered and said quietly, “I am, yes. It’s alright. No, not so far. Not certain just yet. Yes. Okay.”

She’d clicked off immediately and was putting the device in her purse when it rang again. She clicked on, said a generic “Hi,” gave the second caller very nearly the same information as the first, then clicked off and put the phone away. Afterward she’d smiled and kissed his cheek, taking his hand as if they were the lovebirds they’d portrayed to the police on the street. Not once had she mentioned either call.

If Marten had seen the text memo she’d sent earlier to Sy Wirth and copied to Loyal Truex and Conor White, he might have understood.

Meeting with our short-list candidate in Berlin. He is somewhat reluctant to join the firm so will need more time to help persuade him to change his mind. Home office execs joining us here to help in the process would only complicate things. More later.

What it had been was an affirmation that she’d trailed Marten to Berlin, had located him, and wanted no interference from any of them. That she had sent the text before the murder of Theo Haas only complicated things, because with Haas’s death everything changed. Suddenly Marten had become a prime suspect in his murder, and very soon, if not already, the police would know she had been with him shortly afterward. Once they had traced them to the Adlon, they would know her identity as well. And what the hell would Messrs. Wirth, Truex, and White do about that once they learned of it?

But Marten had known nothing of that communication at all. What he would know was that in the last minutes she had received two brief calls that she had replied to ambiguously. Who they had been from or what they were about he could only guess, and she intended to leave it that way. Then, just seconds later, her BlackBerry had chimed a third time. She’d taken it from her purse, read a brief text message, then clicked off. What it had been about Marten wouldn’t know, either, but from the way he looked at her, it was clear the run of recent communications was beginning to trouble him enough that she was afraid he might bolt from her the first chance he got. To ease his concern, and hers, she was about to tell him what had been in the text when the world around them suddenly got in the way.

“Would you mind, sir?” one of the white-jacketed waiters, a fiftyish man with curly eyebrows and a mustache, had stopped beside them. He carried a tray on which were balanced a half-dozen large glasses of beer and was looking directly at Marten, who, on the aisle seat, was closest to him.

“For the people next to your wife,” he said with a smile. “Sure,” Marten said, taking one and then another of the glasses. One, two he handed them to Anne, who then passed them on to a middle-aged Australian couple seated next to them.

“Ten euros will make it,” the waiter said.

The Australian woman dug in her purse and handed a twenty-euro bill to Anne, who handed it to Marten, who passed it to the waiter. Change came back the same way, and then a three-euro tip went back to the waiter, who said, “Dankeschön,” and moved off to deliver the remaining beverages to a foursome two rows forward.

“Thank you.” The Australian woman smiled at Anne.

“Our pleasure.” Anne returned the smile, then gave it a minute and looked to Marten. Lowering her voice, she gave him the gist of the text message. “Our accommodations are ready, darling. Get off at the next landing.”

8:38 P.M.