The Hadrian Memorandum

86

9:52 P.M.

The rain was everything. Off-and-on showers had been forecast for the next few days and were expected to begin after midnight. But just after dark a storm front moved in and a steady rain began to fall. To Marten it was serendipitous, and he used it as an excuse to go out after Anne.

He’d found an umbrella stand in a cubbyhole near the apartment’s front door with three large umbrellas tucked into it. Several hats and caps had been in a nearby closet. As with almost everything else, and in a most thorough way, Raisa Amaro had provided her guests with solid protection against nature. Now, with the Glock automatic in his waistband and using the night and weather to help veil his movements, he ventured out.

Umbrella held overhead, jacket collar turned up, a bucket hat borrowed from the closet pulled over his ears and several-day growth of beard adding to his prayer that neither a passing police patrol nor White’s people, however many of them there might be, would recognize him, at least initially, he let Raisa’s front door close behind him, then crossed Rua do Almada and went into the now deserted park.

Six minutes later he crossed Rua da Flores, leaving the Bairro Alto district and entering the Chiado section, backtracking the way he and Anne had come. It was the only thing he could do considering that neither of them had been in Lisbon before today. His guess was that she had to have seen something in passing that caught her eye, a place she felt she could retreat to later. For what purpose he had no idea whatsoever.

Her fear of the CIA seemed to be at the core of everything. But what she thought she could do about it somewhere out here on a rainy Sunday night in a city she barely knew mystified him. Yet whatever she was so intent on doing was, as he’d told her, beside the point if she ended up in the custody of the police or dead at the hands of Conor White. Still, concerned about her as he was and as angry with her as he’d been, at another time and place he might have let it ride, have let her take her chances and get whatever it was out of her system while he stayed in the apartment riding herd on the photographs and keeping out of sight himself. But he no longer had that luxury. Not now, not after President Harris had so compellingly stirred the pot.

Twenty minutes earlier, and still in the apartment, he’d used his dark blue throwaway cell phone to call Harris-at Camp David or the White House or wherever he was-on his own throwaway cell. There had been no answer. He’d tried again to no avail. Then, seconds later, the apartment’s phone had rung. It startled him and he hesitated. Finally he picked up, sure it was either Anne or Joe Ryder.

“It’s me,” an unfamiliar voice said.

“Who is me?” he said warily.

“Cousin Jack. I was in a meeting when you called. I’m in another room using a laptop with a special voice-filtering IP service that’s very difficult to intercept.”

Marten relaxed. “You wanted me to let you know when we got here. I was waiting for Ryder’s call. I thought maybe this was it.” He made no mention of Anne, just let the president assume she was there with him.

“He’s still in Rome. You may not hear from him until tomorrow morning.” Immediately the president’s demeanor became more serious. “The Portuguese police have found the body of the German policeman, Emil Franck.”

“I know.”

“I asked for a detailed report on it. He was shot once in the back of the head. Then his body was put into a car and driven to a beach somewhere near Portimão where the car was set on fire. No mention was made of this Russian, Kovalenko, you talked about.”

“I wouldn’t think so. He’s very good at what he does.”

“When you called from the bookshop you told me Moscow knew about the Bioko field. If they already knew, why was he with the German?”

“The photographs. Franck was coming after them for the CIA. The Russians knew about them, but they didn’t know where they were. They hoped he would lead them to the prize. Franck was a double agent. He had no choice but to let Kovalenko come along.”

Marten heard the president hesitate, as if he’d suddenly had an even more troubling thought. “The photographs. You do have them.”

“Yes. He let me keep them, probably hoping the police would find me and think they were the reason I murdered Theo Haas.”

“He came all that way for the pictures, killed the policeman, and then let you keep them?” The president was incredulous.

“Not exactly.”

“What the devil does that mean?”

“Kovalenko took the memory card from the camera that was used to photograph them. There’s far more damning stuff on it than just the pictures that were printed. A lot more.”

“So, in essence, he does have them.”

“He thinks he does. But when he gets to where he’s going, plugs in the card, and brings the pictures up on a screen, he’s going to find he’s got a whole lot of pictures of half-naked young women Theo Haas secretly photographed while they were sunbathing on the beach near his house. I switched cards on him. I have the original. No one knows but you, not even Anne. Both are locked away in the room safe here.”

Marten could almost see the president grin. Then abruptly he spoke, his voice even more somber than before.

“What the police haven’t made public is that you and Ms. Tidrow are the prime suspects in Franck’s murder.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. They know we were in Praia da Rocha this morning. They don’t want to make it public and drive us underground, then have us get away, like in Berlin.”

“This is different than Berlin, Nick. You’re now not just a murderer but a cop killer. So is she. Raisa Amaro is a very smart, very gifted and trusted woman. She’ll keep anyone away from where you are. So both of you, stay right there. Don’t do anything until you hear from Joe Ryder.”

“Right.” Marten still said nothing about Anne leaving.

“Not just right, crucial. I finally saw the CIA briefing video from Equatorial Guinea. I was sickened as you were. I’m meeting with the secretary-general of the UN tomorrow to see what we can do to intervene or at least bring in humanitarian aid. But there’s something else, and why we have to get you both out of there as quickly as possible and before the police or anyone else finds you.

“We need the photographs and whatever else is on the camera’s memory card as hard evidence. But we also need the sworn testimony of Anne Tidrow to establish beyond question that Striker Oil, the Hadrian Company, and SimCo conspired to arm the revolutionaries for their own gain.”

“I’m not sure she knew what was going on at the time.”

“Maybe not, but she certainly knows enough about the inner workings of Striker and its relationship with Hadrian to give the attorney general’s office a solid base to work from. Whatever she can give us is more than we have.

“One more thing. You said Franck was a double agent and the Russians knew it.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know if they have seen the CIA video?”

“They have. Kovalenko told me they intercepted it and copied it.”

Marten heard the president sigh in despair. “That seriously exacerbates what we’ve worried about from the start. If the pictures are made public and at the same time the Russians leak the video, I can guarantee you very few in this world, our own citizens included, will see the U.S. as anything but a murderous exploiter who has used the mercenary forces of an American oil company to further its own political ends. We will then be in the extremely delicate position of having to prove our innocence beyond any doubt whatsoever to an outraged global public. A feat that will be all but impossible without Ms. Tidrow’s presence and testimony.

“There’s something else, too. The very real possibility that Kovalenko or agents working with him will come after you again once they discover you’ve switched memory cards. They will want the real one. So I repeat. Stay where you are and wait for Ryder’s call. He’ll be protected by his own RSO security detail, and the CIA will leave it at that. They’ll get you out and onto Ryder’s plane. We’ll take it from there.” The president hesitated, then finished. “I got you into this pickle, Nick, and I’m doing everything I can to get you out. But unfortunately I can’t guarantee success. Most of it’s going to be up to you, and Joe Ryder and his people.”

“I realize that.”

“Then, as I said before, good luck and Godspeed. And keep Ms. Tidrow close.”

“Yes, sir, I will,” Marten said. The president clicked off.

Marten let out a breath

and stared

at the empty room.

10:10 P.M.

Lost in thought, still rattled by the president’s directive and his own guilt at letting Harris believe Anne was safely with him, Marten stepped blindly from a curb. Immediately there was a flash of headlights and a loud blare of horn, and he jumped back as a city bus passed inches from his nose. He swore out loud, then ducked low under his umbrella and crossed the street, moving deeper into the Chiado district looking for any sign of Anne.

For all the rain and dark and the fact that it was Sunday night, it was still summer, and even though most shops were closed, here and there he found an open café, a bar, a restaurant, a specialty shop selling souvenir T-shirts, coffee mugs, key chains, cheap cameras, and the like. She had to be in one of them because there was nothing else. But which one? And how far had she gone before she found what she wanted? Whatever that was.

10:13 P.M.