The Hadrian Memorandum

42

9:12 A.M.

The van had been there right on time, parked at the curb at the end of the alley where it met Ziegelstrasse. It was white and reasonably new. A man introduced by Anne as Hartmann Erlanger was at the wheel. He was probably in his late fifties and slim with thinning gray hair. He wore frameless glasses and a light brown cardigan over dark brown slacks, all of which gave him the appearance of a retired professor or antiques dealer, the role he seemed to be playing. Or at least that was what Marten remembered before he was ushered into the vehicle’s rear compartment and past a collection of a dozen or so straight-backed antique chairs. Immediately Erlanger removed an interior panel to reveal a tiny, cramped space over the left rear wheel.

“Get in, please,” he said in heavily accented English. “The police are stopping traffic at intersections, checking identification. I was lucky to get through. If we are stopped, please do not move, make no sound at all. Hold your breath if you can.”

Marten climbed in and twisted around, trying to make his six-foot-tall body somehow conform to the microscopic area. Then Erlanger put the panel back in place. Marten heard him lock it, and like that he was alone in the pitch black.

He remembered hearing Erlanger speak to Anne in English seconds later. “How is your German? There is every chance we will be stopped on the way out.”

He heard Anne begin to say something in German, and then the driver’s door slammed closed and Erlanger started the engine. Seconds later the van moved off.

Whatever else Anne had done, or hadn’t, or was involved with, there was no question that she had balls. Apparently she was going to sit up front with Erlanger as they attempted to pass through Franck’s roadblocks. Probably play Erlanger’s wife or sister or niece. There was every chance she’d get away with it, too. Not just because of her attitude and determination and her ability to speak German but because of the way she looked-the reason she’d gone out early and the reason for the garment bag she carried when she came back. In the minutes before they went out to meet Erlanger she’d put her dark hair up under a blond shoulder-length wig and replaced her jeans outfit and running shoes with a dowdy beige pantsuit and ugly orthopedic sandals. Her old clothes she stuffed back into the garment bag and brought with them.

Marten moved gingerly, trying to find some sort of comfort in his cramped, traveling prison. For a time he thought he had managed it and relaxed as best he could. Then the van hit a pothole in the roadway and he shot straight up, banging his head against the top of the enclosure. Seconds later they slowed and came to a stop. He heard a mix of voices and then that of a sharp-edged, authoritative male speaking German. Erlanger’s voice came next. They were at a police checkpoint.

Now what?

Suddenly he heard the van’s rear doors open. Then someone climbed inside. He held his breath as Erlanger had asked. There was the scrape of the antique chairs as they were moved aside. Immediately there was a thump on the van’s far wall, as if someone had hit it with a fist. Then came more. The vehicle’s interior paneling was being checked. Seconds later there was a bang on the outside of the panel just above his head. In the next instant he heard Anne say something in German, her voice calm and accommodating. Several seconds passed, and then he heard footsteps retreating and the sound of the rear doors closing. There was another exchange between Erlanger and the authoritative male. A silence followed, and then the van moved off.

Marten exhaled.

One checkpoint down. How many more to go?

9:32 A.M.

9:40 A.M.

Hauptkommissar Franck sat alone in a dark gray Audi parked along Lichtensteinallee in the Tiergarten, Berlin’s sprawling urban park. He stared blankly out at the drizzle and listened to the crackle of radio transmissions from his people in the field, most particularly the force he’d sent out in the last hour following his conversation with the Monbijou’s waiter. His description of the man and woman who had gotten off the tour boat at the Lustgarten dock, coupled with the reference he’d made to the Dallas Cowboys baseball cap the man had been wearing, all but matched the account the shamed motorcycle officers had given him in their report.

As a result he’d made a computerized grid of the surrounding area, then set up roadblocks at intersections and sent two hundred plainclothes and uniformed officers into it in a block-by-block search. Afterward he’d climbed into his car and driven here, then parked and waited.

Now he lifted a small container of orange juice, took a sip, and put it back in the car’s cup holder. The gray sky, the drizzle. He should be home sleeping, especially after the long night. Under other circumstances the suspects would already be in custody. Meaning he could get up late, have a cup of coffee with his wife, then go to the gym before meeting with the media. But these weren’t other circumstances.

“We need to talk.” He still heard the throaty female voice he’d heard when he’d answered his cell phone in the early-morning hours.

“When?”

“Twenty minutes.”

“Same place?”

“Yes.”

The place had been a darkened café just off Taubenstrasse near Gendarmenmarkt Square. The time, 3:30 A.M. It had been just the two of them, half seen in a chiaroscuro of near black-and-white created by the spill from a streetlamp outside. Elsa was older, as he was, but still exhilaratingly handsome, intellectually and sexually. The sexual activity between them had stopped years before, and he knew better than to try to relight it. Especially now and under the circumstances.

“This Nicholas Marten,” she’d said as she had walked behind the bar to pour them each a small cognac and then come around it to sit on a stool next to him.

“What about him?”

“Allegedly there are a number of photographs pertaining to the rebellion in Equatorial Guinea. They are why Marten came to Berlin, to collect them.”

“What are they of?”

“All we’ve been told is that they are strategically important. Read into it what you will.”

“By ‘allegedly’ you mean ‘if they exist.’”

“We are assuming they do.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Follow Marten. Find the pictures-the camera’s digital memory card may be with them. If it is, retrieve both. Afterward eliminate Marten and anyone with him.”

“To follow him, Elsa, I have to find him without his knowing. Something quite difficult in itself but complicated even more by the elevated profile of the case and the number of police personnel involved.”

“It can be done, Emil. We succeeded before in the old days and under far more difficult circumstances.”

“We didn’t have the media curse we have now.”

She hadn’t replied, just stared at him in silence. He’d been given an order. Excuses didn’t exist. Like the old days.

He remembered picking up his glass and taking a sip of the cognac, then looking at her directly. “Who is he?”

“Marten?”

“Yes.”

“You mean other than a landscape architect?”

He’d nodded.

“As yet, we don’t know.”

“Before he came to Berlin”-there was no point in keeping it a secret from her; she might have known anyway-“he had been in Equatorial Guinea. So had Anne Tidrow, the woman we think is with him.”

“Board member,” she’d said. “Striker Oil Company. Houston, Texas. They have a large oil operation in Equatorial Guinea.”

“So you do know.”

“Tell me the rest, Emil.”

“While they were there a priest was murdered. He was the brother of Theo Haas.”

“Did either of them have contact with the priest?”

“I don’t know. Any more than I know why Marten-”

“Murdered Theo Haas?”

“Yes.”

“Did he murder him?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Still, it is reason enough for you to kill him after you recover the photographs.”

“Yes, if your information is correct and he knows where they are.”

She’d looked at him with a steely silence, a gesture of condescension she’d employed for as long as he’d known her. Then she’d picked up her glass, drained it.

“I will give you further instructions as I have them,” she’d said, then set the glass on the bar and looked at him once more-either remembering the old days or trying to judge whether or not she could still trust him, he didn’t know which. “Please lock the door when you leave,” she’d said finally, then stood up and walked out.

Her instructions had come two hours later, waking him shortly after he’d fallen asleep on his office couch. He was to meet a man in the Tiergarten on the southern edge of Neuer Lake at ten o’clock that same morning. He would be a Russian in his midforties, bearded and a little overweight. His name was Kovalenko.