The Hadrian Memorandum

74

STILL PRAIA DA ROCHA, THE SANTA CATARINA FORTRESS.

SAME TIME.

The old fort was at the eastern end of Avenida Tomás Cabreira and on the banks of the Rio Arade near its mouth, where it emptied into the sea. It had been constructed in 1621 to defend the cities of Silves and Portimão from Moors and Spanish pirates. Now it was little more than a tourist attraction, a series of ancient stone buildings and a small chapel devoted to St. Catherine of Alexandria, its terrace giving sweeping views of the Atlantic, the river, and Praia da Rocha’s beaches and sandstone cliffs. It also was a place for Josiah Wirth and Conor White to meet while they tried to put together what went wrong and if there was yet a way to do something about it.

Some fifty yards distant, Patrice and Irish Jack sat in a black Toyota Land Cruiser in the fortress’s parking lot watching them. They could see Wirth pacing back and forth on the terrace talking vigorously into his BlackBerry while White stood patiently nearby, the bright sunshine reflecting like a shimmering wall off the sea behind them.

Irish Jack lifted a pair of binoculars and pointed them in their direction. Immediately both men came into close focus. A second later, Wirth clicked off the Blackberry and stared off in disgust.

“Maybe your friend has nothing to report, Mr. Wirth, and that is the reason he hasn’t been in contact.” Conor White was deliberately composed and accommodating, desperately trying to remain civil to a man he wholly detested. “Maybe his people were on top of Marten and he sidestepped them, like he did all of us in Málaga. Maybe he’s still somewhere here in Praia da Rocha. Try your friend again. He might be in a dead zone, or something’s wrong with his cell. Maybe by now he has it working and knows something.”

“He isn’t in a dead zone for more than an hour. There’s nothing wrong with his cell, either. He’s not taking my calls because he doesn’t want to.”

“Then something went wrong with Anne and Marten.”

“Nothing went wrong,” Wirth spat angrily, then lifted the BlackBerry again and walked off to stare out at the Atlantic where a dozen or more sailboats were passing by in some sort of regatta.

White could see him punch in a number, then wait while it rang through. Seconds later he clicked off, then clicked on again and apparently tried another number.

What happened between the time Wirth had given them Praia da Rocha as Marten’s destination and the time they arrived to take care of him, there was no way to know. But at this stage Wirth was clearly in a state of what White called controlled emotional upheaval. Not much different from the behavior he’d observed over the few months he’d known him. Yet his emotional state now was the worst he’d seen and the cracks were beginning to show. Clearly he felt he’d been double-crossed, cut out of the picture at the last moment. Not only was he outraged that it had happened, he didn’t know what the hell to do about it.

Before, when they’d been close on Marten’s tail, when they’d finally learned where he’d landed and then gone, there had been every expectation that they would soon recover the photographs and their fears would come to an end. Seemingly that was no longer the case. If whoever this third party was that Wirth had engaged to track Marten down had intercepted him along the way and retrieved the photos, he/she/they would have known something of what was in them from the beginning. Meaning they had planned all along to recover them for their own purposes. Meaning, too, that White’s long-held fear that the Striker chairman had gotten in far over his head had suddenly become a horrendous reality. If he’d hated Josiah Wirth before, he hated him more now than anyone he’d ever met. And that included his father.

“Conor,” Wirth called sharply, then turned and came excitedly toward him. “An envelope has been sent to my hotel in Faro.”

“The photographs?” White felt a jolt of impossible hope, as if some wild ray of good fortune had suddenly and unbelievably shined down from above. Maybe there was a chance yet. Maybe he had been wrong. Maybe Wirth wasn’t the fool he thought.

“All I was told was that an envelope was being messengered to the hotel.” Wirth started for the parking lot and the black Land Cruiser. “We won’t know what’s in it until we get there.”

1:42 P.M.