Allan Folsom - The Hadrian Memorandum

The answer, he decided, was to wait and see where that was and what the circumstances were when they got there.

9:57 A.M.

BERLIN, THE TIERGARTEN, NEUER LAKE. 10:10 A.M.

They looked like Mutt and Jeff as they walked down a wooded path at the water’s edge, their jacket collars turned up against the drizzle-the six-foot six-inch Emil Franck, alongside five-foot nine-inch Yuri Kovalenko. Kovalenko spoke a hesitating German. Franck’s Russian was as passable. Consequently they held their conversation in English.

Their primary order of business: the photographs and, with luck, the memory card from the camera that recorded them. Neither man knew what the photos were of or if they even existed. What brought the two together was the promise of the objects’ importance and the endeavor to retrieve them.

10:15 A.M.

The two turned a blind corner near an inlet, startling several ducks into flight. Franck stopped to watch them fly out over the lake, then land in the water a safe distance from shore. For a moment he stood there enjoying the simple pleasure of observing wildlife. Finally he reached into his jacket and took out photographs of Marten and Anne Tidrow. Marten’s was made from a frame of the cell phone images circulated to the media; Tidrow’s was from a Striker Oil web site.

Kovalenko glanced at them and put them in his pocket. “Thank you, Hauptkommissar. I have previously seen a photograph of Ms.Tidrow. Mr. Marten, I already know something of.”

“You are referring to his employment as a landscape architect in England and that he was in Equatorial Guinea when the brother of Theo Haas was murdered.”

“Yes.” Kovalenko nodded. “That and a little more.”

“You have information we don’t.”

“At one time he was a homicide investigator in the Los Angeles Police Department.”

“What?”

“Good one, too.”

“How do you know this?”

Kovalenko smiled. “It’s a long story, Hauptkommissar. Just appreciate that I do.” His smile faded. “It is only a matter of time before your excellent police force apprehends both him and Ms. Tidrow. You realize we cannot have that happen.”

“Perhaps he will get lucky and escape,” Franck said flatly, and the two walked on. Tall German, short Russian. Gray sky. Incessant drizzle.

Kovalenko smiled thinly. It was safe to assume “perhaps” had little to do with it. By now he could have had a much clearer photograph of Marten to hand around. Say, one requested from British authorities, a copy retrieved from his passport or driver’s license. But such a thing would only serve to make it easier for the public to spot him and alert the police. Alternatively, he might well have made arrangements that, in one way or another, would allow Marten and his companion to evade his own massive dragnet.

“Yes, perhaps he will get lucky, Hauptkommissar,” Kovalenko said. “Perhaps indeed.”

10:20 A.M.

10:28 A.M.

Conor White stared absently out the window of the tri-engine Falcon 50 as the chartered jet flew north toward Berlin. Thirty thousand feet below and through a broken cloud deck he could see Geneva and the Jet d’Eau, Lake Geneva’s im mense water fountain, spraying a cannon of water five hundred feet in the air. Yet neither the Swiss city nor the sight of the fountain registered. His thoughts were on Berlin and what would take place when he got there.

The whole thing in Spain had been an unfortunate, messy, and, as it turned out, wholly unnecessary exercise because he realized almost from the start that the Spaniards had no idea where the photographs were, or even what they were. Yet it was a situation he couldn’t walk away from until he knew for certain. He’d pushed it as far as he could, and after that there was no turning back, so he’d finished it with the hope it was something that would not come back to haunt them. Had he had his way in the first place he would have gone after Nicholas Marten directly, but that had not been his assignment; it had been Anne’s. And look what had happened.

As far as he could tell the only thing positive to come from her work was that she had proven that Marten did know where the photographs were. It had been confirmed when she’d called him at the airport in Madrid.

“ Where are you? ” she’d said. “ I just wanted to know where you were if I needed you .”

When he had told her, he’d asked where she was. She had replied that she was in Berlin and warned him not to come there and to disregard anything he saw in the media. It was then he pressed her about Marten, making sure he was with her and asking directly if the photographs existed and if he knew where they were.

“ Yes, I think so ,” she’d said after an awkward hesitation. She’d affirmed it when he’d pushed her a second time, demanding to know if she was certain.

“Do you think or do you know?” he’d demanded.

“ I don’t think, Conor, I know ,” she’d snapped, then signed off.

White shook his head. If he had followed Marten, right from the start, by now, police or not, he would have been close on his tail or maybe even had him alone, with Anne nowhere in the picture. Either way the photographs would have soon been recovered and the whole nasty situation quickly resolved. But it hadn’t happened. Instead he was on his way to Berlin not to confront Anne and Marten but to meet with Sy Wirth. For what reason he had no idea, except that Wirth was his employer and was about to act like it. Tell him what to do and how and when to do it.

It was Wirth, he knew, who had had the last word in allowing Anne to follow Marten and sending him to Spain. If he made the same kind of uninformed decisions again, it would be only a matter of time before the police had both Anne and Marten and the photographs. If that happened everything would come apart, and fast.

Abruptly he turned from the window to see Irish Jack and Patrice quietly playing cards across from him. Neatly dressed in jackets and ties as he was, they looked like professional athletes en route to their next game. Which in a way they all were; that is, if he could somehow find a way to keep Sy Wirth out of it. But for the moment, the Texas oilman was calling the shots and White would do his best to accommodate him, graciously and with his best Eton, Oxford, and Sandhurst manners, when they touched down in Berlin.

10:32 A.M.

POTSDAM, GERMANY. 10:40 A.M

The van had been stopped for several minutes. From the dark of his hiding place in the compartment over the left rear wheel, Marten wondered what was going on. Erlanger had said something in German, and then the driver and passenger doors had opened and closed. After that there had been nothing. Had they reached their destination or had they been stopped by the police and silently ordered out of the vehicle at gunpoint?

Another minute passed, and then he heard the rear doors open and someone come inside. He held his breath. There was a noise outside the panel next to his head. Abruptly it was removed. He pulled back, expecting to see a man in uniform or even Hauptkommissar Franck with a dozen police crowded in the doorway behind him. Instead Erlanger’s face came into view.

“Are you alright?” he said.

Marten heaved a sigh of relief. “Stiff and a little nervous but alright.”

“I’m sorry. We had no choice. It was a means that worked quite effectively getting people out of the Eastern Sector during the Cold War.”

“I could use a toilet, and in a hurry.”

Anne, still in her blond wig and dowdy clothing, was waiting as he climbed from the van. For a fleeting moment she seemed as if she genuinely cared about his well-being and was grateful the trip was over and they had made it safely. As quickly, she was back to business.