Allan Folsom - The Hadrian Memorandum

“Please, God, no!” Marten froze in horror. In the next instant he realized prayers and denial were useless. He knew exactly who the victims were-Marita and her students. The coincidence was far too great for it to have been anyone else. Shocked and sickened, he watched for a moment longer, then turned off the sound and walked away. His senses numb, he went into the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee, then just stood there staring at nothing. Finally he set the cup down and found his way into the bathroom.

He looked in the mirror. His complexion was ghostly white. There were paper cups by the sink. He filled one with tap water and drank it, then crumpled the cup and dropped it into the wastepaper basket. He went back into the front room to stare at the TV still playing in silence. He saw one commercial and then another. Next came a business news brief. Then a replay of the story about the limousine explosion.

The initial account had reported the victims missing since they’d arrived in Madrid yesterday. Suddenly it occurred to him that if the police had the bodies of the limo driver and three of the five missing people, where were the other two? And who were they? Marita and one of the kids? Or two of the kids, with Marita among the dead in the exploded car?

Marten felt rage begin to heave through him. Unless there had been some terrible fluke of coincidence, whatever had happened had to have involved the photographs. This was the doing of AG Striker and SimCo. There was no point in even thinking it might have been operatives from President Tiombe’s cutthroat army. They might have had the will but not the kind of connections or swift response that a world-class mercenary like Conor White would have at his fingertips.

Meaning that what Anne had said about not trusting White and wanting to recover the photos herself in order to help slow the war and save the reputation of her father’s company would have been nothing more than a excuse to get him to trust her. Meaning, too, that she most certainly would have known about White’s activity in Spain. Maybe even helped orchestrate it. All of them making the assumption that, afraid something would happen to him, he had confided in Marita and the others and told them what the pictures were and where to find them. If that were so, it meant she didn’t give a damn about anything but protecting the company.

Marten left the TV and stood near the window watching the line of people with umbrellas in the alley below. Immediately his gaze shifted to the end of it where it met Ziegelstrasse. It was the way Anne would come when she returned.

Where the hell was she?

7:33 A.M.

LONDON, THE DORCHESTER HOTEL.

STILL SATURDAY, JUNE 5. 8:50 A.M.

(LONDON IS ONE HOUR EARLIER THAN BERLIN.)

Sy Wirth’s corporate Gulfstream G550 had had landed at Stansted Airport just after midnight. Immediately afterward a limousine had taken him into the city and to a private apartment in Mayfair. At 1:30 in the morning London time, he’d gone to bed. Four and a half hours later he was working out in the apartment’s gym. At 7:07 he showered, then dressed in dark blue suit and tie, his accent and ostrich skin boots the only outward remnants of his Texas persona. At 7:30 he left the Mayfair apartment and was driven to the Dorchester Hotel on Park Lane. At 7:45 he was seated in a private dining room awaiting the arrival of his guest. Three minutes later that person arrived with fanfare-the brash, designer-dressed, forty-eight-year-old Russian oil oligarch Dimitri Korostin with a gaggle of bodyguards in tow. Within seconds the bodyguards were gone, and the two greeted each other as the old friends and business adversaries they were. They ordered breakfast and began to make the ritual small talk.

“How are your children, Dimitri?”

“They are well, already in college, if you can believe it. Oxford, Yale, and the Sorbonne.” Korostin grinned, his Russian accent heavy. “Covering as many bases as possible given we only have the three. And how are you, Sy? Or are you again calling yourself Josiah, giving yourself some biblical dignity when you come to this side of the pond?”

“I’m in the oil business, Dimitri. I have no dignity, biblical or otherwise. Neither do you.”

“So we stop talking about children and other bullshit and get to the reason you are here. What do you want to sell?”

“Trade.”

“What for what?”

“I”-Wirth hesitated-“need your help.”

“That can be expensive.”

“Andean gas field lease, thirty-five years.”

“Which one?”

“The Magellan, in Santa Cruz-Tarija.”

“That is potentially a very big field.” Korostin smiled. “Your trouble must be personal.”

“Someone has a number of photographs and most probably the digital memory card from the camera used to take them. I want both recovered and returned to me with whatever package or packing they are in unopened.”

“You’re being blackmailed.”

Wirth nodded.

“A woman. A man, perhaps.”

Wirth nodded. Dimitri’s inference was as good a cover as any. “Sex can be a nasty business.”

“Surely you have your own people for these things.”

“I’m not convinced my people are going to get it done. For all its success the West is provincial. We have a tradition of trying to do things more or less the right way, even if it isn’t always legal. It’s a mind-set that doesn’t necessarily work, especially if the situation is urgent. You, on the other hand, take the shortest route to the problem and more often than not have a satisfactory outcome. I need only mention the former KGB agent poisoned with polonium right here in London.”

“The result is not always neat.”

“But it works just the same.” Wirth took a folded sheet of paper from his jacket and handed it to Korostin. “The Magellan/Santa Cruz-Tarija contract.”

Korostin slipped on reading glasses and opened it.

The document was on simple everyday stationery. There was no letterhead, nothing to identify where it had come from. The words covered barely two-thirds of a page, the deal spelled out in the simplest terms, the particulars, everything. Josiah Wirth’s signature was at the bottom of it.

“Everything’s there,” Wirth said. “The name of the principal person involved, Nicholas Marten. What I want done and how. When I have the items in my possession the Magellan/Santa Cruz-Tarija is yours.”

Korostin read it. Then read it again and looked up. “You want to be kept informed of our movements.”

“Each step of the way. I want to know where your people are and where Marten is. No action is to be taken on him until I am there, so that when the photographs and camera memory card are recovered they can be handed directly to me.”

“That might be awkward.”

“You are a gifted man, Dimitri, you’ll find a way to make it work.”

Korostin smiled. “If the items are as damning as your offer suggests, how do you know I will keep my part of the bargain and not turn them against you?”

“Small as we are compared to the giants, Striker Oil has any number of long-term oil and gas field leases around the world. Something you well know. You might want to do business with us again. As I said, you are a gifted man. You wouldn’t jeopardize that opportunity.”

Korostin folded the paper and slipped it into his jacket. “When do you want the work completed?”

“Yesterday.”

BERLIN. 8:18 A.M.

Four people stood in the front room of a modest flat on Scharrenstrasse: Hauptkommissar Franck, Komissar Gertrude Prosser, two uniformed policemen, and Karl Betz. A fifth person, Betz’s wife, peeked anxiously through a door that led to the rest of the apartment. Betz was fifty-two, a little overweight, had a mustache and curly eyebrows, and was very nervous. He was also a waiter on the tour boat Monbijou .