The Hadrian Memorandum

78

LISBON. STILL SUNDAY, JUNE 6. 5:12 P.M.

They came in on the A2 Auto-estrada, passing the towns of Palmela, Fernão Ferro, and then Almada on the southern bank of the Tagus River. Then, still in a crush of heavy traffic, they were across the towering 25th of April Bridge-an edifice that was a near replica of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge-and into the city, staying on the main highway, Avenida da Ponte.

Marten leaned forward to talk to Stump Logan. “We’re looking for the Bairro Alto section. Rua do-”

Instantly Logan put up a hand for silence, then yanked off his iPod headset. “Don’t,” he said sharply, looking at Marten in the mirror. “I don’t want to know, period. Area, street address, who you’re meeting. Nothing at all.” With that he slipped the headset back on and drove on in silence.

Four or five miles later he took an exit near the Zoological Gardens, then turned left and then right onto Rua Professor Lima Basto. Another twenty yards and he pulled to the curb and stopped.

“Down there and around the corner”-he pointed a finger at the windshield-“is Terminal Rodoviário de Lisboa, a central bus terminal where the motor coaches from the Algarve come in. Get out and walk to it; go in from the coach entrance and then out the front door. Nobody will stop you, unless by now the police have the German policeman’s body and your faces are plastered all over. If they do, you’re as good as dead anyway. But if they don’t and somebody sees you and remembers you later, they’ll think you came into the city by bus. The police come to me afterward and ask if I was in Lisbon, I’ll tell them yes, I was, I had to pick up some books from a fellow used-book storekeeper-which I will do before I leave. Unless we had plain bad luck with those motorcycle cops, there’ll be no way they can prove I drove you here. All I can tell them is that you were in my store looking for a Jacob Cádiz and that you came back later looking for my help in getting out of the city. To where, you didn’t say. I told you there was nothing I could do. You left, and that was the last I saw of you.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Marten said.

“Good. Now, if you don’t mind, I have some books to pick up before I head home.”

They left it that way, with Anne and Marten on the street and Stump Logan and his dogs driving off in his thirty-odd-year-old VW bus, having wished them good luck and saying he was glad to have been of service.

Marten glanced around, then started them quickly down the sidewalk toward the bus terminal.

“This Bairro Alto section that you asked Logan about,” Anne said. “You know where it is?”

“No, we’re going to have to find it. Get a street map or something.”

“What’s there?”

“A safe house.”

“Safe house?”

“Yes.”

“And then tomorrow a meeting with Joe Ryder.”

“Yes.”

“The ‘old girlfriend’ you were on the phone with in Logan’s office. She set it up.”

Marten nodded.

“Who the hell is she that she can orchestrate all this?”

“Just a friend.”

“No, not just a friend. Someone who can pull top-level strings, and quickly. Things like this don’t just happen.”

Marten glanced around again, watching the traffic, looking for police.

“Who are you really, Mr. Nicholas Marten? Who do you work for?”

“Fitzsimmons and Justice. Landscape architects. Manchester, England.”

“That’s not a good enough answer.”

“For now it will have to do.”

5:20 P.M.