Allan Folsom - The Hadrian Memorandum

It took Marten four minutes to get to his room and start putting his things together. Anne Tidrow’s arrival had been a surprise, but nothing like the sudden murder of Theo Haas. Her personal motivations aside, her quick wit, spiriting him out of there when the crowd was pointing him out to the police thinking he was the man they were looking for, had been deeply appreciated. The trouble was, Haas had been a national icon and the hunt for his killer and anyone connected to him would be massive. He had to get out of Berlin and Germany as quickly as possible, before the police investigation began in earnest and witnesses in both the park and at the Brandenburg Gate began describing him in detail. There was something else, too. It wouldn’t be long before the police would discover that Theo Haas and Father Willy were brothers and immediately wonder if the two murders were connected. If that were made public, Anne Tidrow, Conor White, and the E.G. army’s hawk-faced officer would no longer be guessing why he had come to Berlin. They would know for certain.

What that meant, the police notwithstanding, was that very soon it would be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, for him to leave Germany, let alone Berlin, without one of them close on his tail. And that he couldn’t permit under any circumstance because now he did know, or at least thought he knew, where the pictures were.

Sitting on the park bench in the Platz der Republik, watching him the way Father Willy had in the rain forest, trying to judge whether or not to trust him, Theo Haas had, in a very roundabout way and in the manner of his brother, pointed him in the direction of the photographs: “Livros usados, Avenida Tomás Cabreira,” he’d said with a smile. “The town of Praia da Rocha in the Algarve region of Portugal. A man named Jacob Cádiz. He collects things.” Seconds later, before Marten had the chance to question him further, the firecrackers had gone off. A second beat after that the curly-haired man struck and Haas was dead.

5:47 P.M.

Marten finished packing his suitcase and zipped it closed. There would be no official checkout, no formal notice of leaving, nothing, just go and let the hotel track him down later. One final glance around to make sure he’d left nothing behind, then he went to the door, opened it, and froze.

“I believe this is yours, Mr. Marten.” Anne Tidrow stood alone in the hallway. Immediately she pressed the hundred-euro bill he’d given to their taxi driver into his hand. “I can afford my own cab fare. May I come in?”

“I-” Marten hesitated.

“Thank you,” she said and stepped into the room, closing the door behind them.

He stared at her. “Now what?”

“I have another taxi waiting. It’s at the side door. I suggest we use it, and sooner rather than later.”

“We?”

“After you left the cab, the driver turned his radio from country music to the news. It seems your murdered friend was not just an author but the famed Nobel laureate Theo Haas. A Nobel laureate who was last seen alive talking to someone in Platz der Republik who, according to witnesses, looked a lot like you. I’m sure that once our driver friend realizes it, he will be more than happy to describe that person to the police, then tell them who was with him and where he took them. Would you like me to explain it further?”

“No.” Marten said. The police had moved more quickly and efficiently than he’d thought they would. It wouldn’t be long before they’d know who he was and would be right here in this room collecting evidence. Like it or not, he and Anne Tidrow were suddenly joined at the hip. Worse, she had her teeth into him and wasn’t about to let go, no matter the consequences. It gave him little choice but to go along with her.

“Just where is this other taxi taking us?” he said.

“My hotel.”

“How do you know that afterward this driver won’t inform the police?”

“Because I’m paying him five hundred euros not to.”

5:50 P.M.

HOTEL ADLON KEMPINSKI, ROOM 647. 6:15 P.M.

Marten stood near the window staring out. Not a hundred yards away, backlit by the late-afternoon sun, was the Brandenburg Gate with a number of police vehicles still clearly in sight. That they’d come back to the same area they had left barely an hour earlier was something he hadn’t realized when they arrived because they’d come in through the luxury hotel’s rear entrance on Behrenstrasse and then taken a back stairwell to avoid using the elevators.

He turned to look at Anne. She had her suitcase open on the bed and was hurriedly packing it. “Some choice of hotels. I count four police cars and three police motorcycles, and that’s just those I can see.”

She stopped and looked at him. “How did I know you were going to come this way? I just wanted a place reasonably close to yours.”

“You should have stayed in Malabo. Better yet, Texas.”

She smiled. “Look at it this way, darling. By now the authorities will have detained anyone they wanted to question, meaning that before long most of them will leave the area.”

“Then what?”

“We go and get the photographs.”

Marten suddenly flared. “You never let up, do you? Somehow you’ve convinced yourself that I know where they are and what’s in them.”

As quickly her eyes narrowed and she pushed back. “Stop playing games with me, Nicholas. You were going out the door with your suitcase when I showed up at your hotel. If the pictures were anywhere nearby you would have simply gone to get them and then come back to your room with nobody the wiser. That means they aren’t in Berlin, maybe not even in Germany. But wherever they are, you were on your way to get them.”

“I had my suitcase because I was going home,” he said quietly.

“You were going home this morning, too, remember? You came to Berlin instead.”

“I came to Berlin to see Theo Haas. He’s dead. What else was I supposed to do? Believe it or not, I have a job waiting. My employers as well as my clients can be exceptionally demanding.”

“Not as demanding as the police. They’ll want to know why you met with Haas, and they won’t buy your fairy tale about discussing park design. Once you tell them the real reason, and you will, they’ll want to know what the photographs were of, and you’ll have to tell them that too. Then we’ll have the beginning of a major international incident and because of it the pictures, wherever they are, will be recovered. The police will see to it.

“You’re not doing this on your own, darling. Not here, and you weren’t in Bioko, either. If those photographs become public, whoever hired you won’t like it, and neither will I. So cut the bullshit about not knowing. We don’t have time for it. There may be a way out of this yet, but you can’t do it without me, and you’re not getting me without the pictures.”

Marten had no idea what “a way out of this” meant. He knew that if he had to, he could get help by calling President Harris and telling him what was going on, but that was something he had to save as a last resort because if he did call him the president would do everything he could to get him out of there. That meant pulling strings, which was something that in itself could set off an international incident no matter how discreetly it was done, simply because of who Theo Haas was. Both the Berlin police and the German public would be outraged to learn that the chief suspect in his murder had been suddenly let go under pressure from the American government.

And one way or another they would learn, if by no other means than the long, invasive tail of the Internet. If that happened, pundits, bloggers, and almost anyone else would have a field day tracing the diplomatic maneuver to its “suspected” source. Even if it couldn’t be proven the damage would have been done and what Anne Tidrow said about “whoever hired you won’t like it” would be a helluva lot more than accurate because it would appear to the world that the president of the United States was trying to cover up a murder. Moreover, it could lead to the ultimate exposure of the photographs, which, when made public, would make it look as if the motive behind it had been to protect both Striker Oil and Hadrian. Clearly that was a scenario Marten couldn’t let play out. So once again, and for now at least, he had little choice but to let Anne Tidrow run the show.