The Hadrian Memorandum

61

STRIKER OIL GULFSTREAM G550. SOMEWHERE OVER

NORTHERN SPAIN. AIRSPEED 510 MILES PER HOUR.

ALTITUDE 31,300 FEET. 6:14 A.M.

“I understand, Conor, there was nothing you could do,” Sy Wirth said with uncharacteristic calm, his ear to his Conor White-only, blue-tape BlackBerry. “I assume you’re still on the ground at Málaga?”

“Yes, sir,” White’s voice came back. “There’s a lot of traffic. The tower is having difficulty picking up the transponder signal from the Cessna. It’s a complicated procedure that’s out of my hands. Even my man in air traffic can’t force it. I’ve pushed him as hard as I can. We’re cleared for takeoff the moment we isolate the signal.”

“I’ll call you back.” Abruptly Wirth clicked off, set the blue-tape BlackBerry on the worktable in front of him, and picked up his other BlackBerry. Immediately he punched in a number and waited for it to connect through.

“I know, Josiah, they’ve lost the signal. My people are on it.” Despite the hour Dimitri Korostin was right there, clearly expecting his call. “It’s much too early to have to deal with your problems. You’re making me begin to think an Andean gas field is hardly worth it.”

“A field the size of the Santa Cruz-Tarija is worth as many problems as you have to solve. That is, if you still intend to deliver as promised. So fuck you, and find out where the hell Marten’s plane is.”

“Fuck you, too. I’ll let you know when I have something.” With that the Russian clicked off.

Sy Wirth set the BlackBerry down and poured himself a cup of coffee from the thermos the flight attendant had provided. When he had it, he sat back and tried to relax. He could worry, but it wouldn’t help. Dimitri’s people were in the air and on Marten’s tail. So far, and despite Marten’s clever maneuverings, they’d tracked him every step of the way, so there was no reason to believe they wouldn’t pick him up again soon. There was little doubt Conor White and his team would find him in due course, too, but Dimitri’s people would find him faster and with a lot less noise.

Unfortunate as losing the Cessna’s signal was, it was strangely working in his favor and was why he hadn’t raised his voice to White. Why upset someone who’s helping you without knowing it? By pressing his man in Málaga air traffic control, he was unconsciously leaving a big fat footprint for the authorities to follow once the business with Marten was done. The same hefty footprint he’d left in Madrid when he hired the limousine and driver to pick up the Spanish doctor and her medical students at the airport and take them to the isolated farmhouse, and then later when he used the Falcon charter to take him from Madrid to Berlin and now back to Spain.

When all was said and done-when Dimitri’s people had delivered the photographs and gone, and from Dimitri’s reputation and actions so far there was little reason to think they wouldn’t succeed, with Marten and Anne dead in the process-the person left twisting in the air would be Conor White. And there would be nothing he could say without incriminating himself further. Even if he pointed the finger at Wirth, claiming he was the mastermind of all this-of arming the rebels and then of directing the search for the damning photographs, which included the interrogations in the farmhouse outside Madrid-his case would fall apart because there would be no photographs and any claim of direct communication between the two of them would end only in a trace back to the general number at Hadrian headquarters in Virginia. An allegation of a clandestine meeting between the two of them at the former bordello in Berlin would be indefensible as well. The apartment had been rented by phone and charged to a SimCo account in England under the name Conor White. On the morning of the day in question Josiah Wirth had been in a meeting with the Russian oil oligarch Dimitri Korostin at the Dorchester Hotel in London. It was true he had gone to Berlin later and taken a suite at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, but that had been to meet with an associate of Korostin’s who had had to cancel at the last minute. He hadn’t even been aware that White was in the city. Sometime after one the next morning he’d left the German capital in the company Gulfstream for a series of business meetings in Barcelona.

It was on the way there that he would hear about the tragedy in whatever town or city where Dimitri’s people caught up with Anne and Marten, and where White and his gunmen would be found by the local authorities and accused of their murders. Authorities who would have gone there on a tip from the Spanish police, who would have been anonymously alerted to White’s probable complicity in the Madrid farmhouse murders and have been warned that he was on his way to wherever this place was to settle some grievous personal account with Striker board member Anne Tidrow.

Depending on the timing, Wirth would either go to the location directly from Barcelona or divert his flight en route, shocked and outraged at White’s involvement with what had happened there and at the Madrid farmhouse and mourning the death of a dear colleague who was the daughter of Striker’s late and much loved found er.

Wirth took another sip of coffee and looked out the window to see the first streaks of day beginning to brighten the eastern sky. Suddenly he felt exhausted, as if all of the anxiety, intensity, and travel of the past days had caught up with him. He’d slept little and knew he would need all the clearheaded energy he could muster when things began to happen. If he could sleep now, even for twenty minutes, it would be a godsend. He put the cup down and lay back, closing his eyes. Just relax, he told himself. Don’t think about anything. Don’t think about anything at all.

6:28 A.M. SPANISH TIME