Allan Folsom - The Hadrian Memorandum

“This is Abba, seen in clandestine footage taken three days ago in Bioko as his forces moved north toward the capital city of Malabo. What began little more than ten weeks ago as organized protests against the government in Rio Muni has become all-out armed rebellion fueled primarily by the Equatorial Guinean army’s savage acts of retaliation against the demonstrators. The major tribes, including the Fang, Bubi, and Fernandinos, have united behind Abba. His strength is growing hourly. So, too, are the causalities as Tiombe’s military steps up its activity, engaging in increasingly brutal acts of reprisal against both rebels and civilians. To date estimates of the dead range above four thousand.”

Now the video cut to a gruesome daylight montage of burned-out villages and hundreds of dead citizens. Many had been beheaded or horribly mutilated. Men, women, children, the elderly. Even animals. Dogs, goats, cows; a horse, still saddled, slaughtered and left on the roadway.

“Jesus God,” Marten murmured.

Immediately the images reverted to more clandestine night-vision footage, this time capturing army troops on a rampage through a village. Raw and terrible footage of soldiers executing civilians with machetes, pistols, rifles, and machine guns. There was a horrifying scene of a screaming woman being raped by five soldiers, one after another. A small boy ran in to try to pull the soldiers off. One of the soldiers grabbed him, turned him around, and made him watch. The boy’s terrified struggle and reaction was tragic, especially when it was contrasted with the faces of rapist-soldiers who had finished with the woman and were standing back laughing. Then the night footage cut to a scene where army troops were using flamethrowers to set huts on fire. Suddenly a naked man ran from the darkness with his hands up, pleading for them to stop. The next instant a soldier turned the flamethrower on him, immolating him in a searing jet of burning gasoline.

“For God’s sake, Anne, I can’t watch any more! Turn it off!” Marten blurted and started to look away. Then- “Wait!” he all but shouted as the night-vision video cut to an older man in army fatigues standing imperially with a small group of heavily armed soldiers at the edge of the battleground watching the proceedings. He was hawk-faced and gray-haired and clearly not a black African like the rest.

“I know him!” Marten said. “He was there when they were interrogating me in Malabo. Who is-?”

In a near perfectly timed response the narrative answered Marten’s query.

“This is Mariano Vargas Fuente, the former Chilean general known as Mariano, once a high-ranking officer in the notorious former Directorate of National Intelligence during the 1973 to 1990 dictatorship of the late General Augusto Pinochet. He is one of the world’s best-known human rights abusers, convicted in absentia of torture and mass murder. Fled war-crimes prosecution and vanished into the jungles of Central America. Is thought to have been recruited by President Tiombe to personally supervise his counterinsurgency program in Rio Muni and Bioko. This is the first known confirmation that he is in Equatorial Guinea.”

Immediately the video cut to a map of Bioko and showed the position of Abba’s forces as they moved north, closing in on Malabo.

“Indicators suggest Tiombe is preparing to flee the country if Abba’s forces continue to gain further ground. Analysts believe that Abba will take control of the government within ten to fourteen days. As of noon tomorrow local time the U.S. embassy will be closed until further notice. All nonessential personnel have been ordered to evacuate. The State Department has issued a warning to all U.S. citizens to leave Equatorial Guinea immediately.”

With that the picture faded and the video ended.

Marten stared at Anne. “You wanted me to see that. Why?”

“I wanted us both to see it. So we can tell the same story to Congressman Ryder. And so that you will trust me the rest of the way. Trust that I want the killing stopped as much as you.”

Marten was silent for a long moment; then he let his eyes find hers. “Does the term ‘all U.S. citizens’ include Striker personnel?”

“Abba’s people are trying to get rid of Tiombe, not us. Our people have been confined to the company compound, which is heavily guarded by SimCo mercenaries. They’re safe.”

“Are they? Let me tell you something. General Mariano knows about the photographs. It’s what they were trying to get from me during the interrogation. Or maybe you knew that.”

Anne shook her head. “No.”

“Just pray to God he doesn’t order his butchers into your company compound looking for them. White’s mercenaries wouldn’t have a chance. And once they fall, God help the drillers, the tech people, the secretaries, the bookkeepers, and all the other Striker and SimCo ‘little people’ I saw in the bar at the Hotel Malabo. Especially if Tiombe’s killers come in with flamethrowers.” Marten paused, anger and outrage eating away at him. “What the hell have you people done in the name of profit?”

Anne said nothing.

“It’s alright, darling,” he said. “Don’t look for an answer. Don’t even try to make one up. Because there is none.”

1:37 P.M.

AIR FORCE ONE. STILL SATURDAY, JUNE 5. 8:15 A.M.

President John Henry Harris sat in shirtsleeves listening to Lincoln Bright, his chief of staff, run through the day’s abbreviated appointment schedule: three White House meetings, one of them with the secretary of state just back from meetings in India and China, then helicopter to Camp David and talks with his chief financial advisers about the on going crises in the economy.

The briefing over, Bright left, and the president leaned back to stare out the window, watching as they passed over Lake Ontario and entered American airspace. He’d had an early breakfast with Canadian prime minister Campbell and Mexican president Mayora at the Harrington Lake compound, then immediately departed. In four hours he would be at Camp David to spend the rest of the weekend enmeshed in critical budget details and preparing for a Monday morning meeting with the governors of a dozen states who would each come looking-begging was a better word-for additional funding beyond what they already had been given.

Still, and for all the importance of the secretary of state’s report and the crises with the economy, other things weighed heavily. A phone call from Joe Ryder in Iraq had come before breakfast with Ryder telling him his fact-finding team had met with an unexpected twist when Hadrian’s Loyal Truex had arrived unannounced, boldly and generously offering to throw the Striker/Hadrian doors and books wide open and inviting Ryder and his colleagues to look over anything they liked. Acting as if, in Ryder’s words, “he had come at the last minute to hide everything in plain sight.” Which apparently he had, because so far they’d found nothing more than they already knew.

Then there had been his morning security briefing, where he’d asked about the situation in Equatorial Guinea and was told that President Tiombe’s army was heavily engaged with the insurgent forces while at the same time committing terrible atrocities against the civilian population under the guise of hunting down rebel leaders. The army’s brutal tactics aside, analysts expected Tiombe’s government to fall within days, and by then Tiombe and his family and staff would have fled the country.

“To go where?” he’d asked.

Reports had been inconclusive, but Tiombe was known to have residences in several parts of the world, Beverly Hills among them. The president’s reaction to that had been simple and drawn a laugh. “I hope to hell he doesn’t do that.” But there was nothing funny about any of it. Immediately he called in Lincoln Bright and instructed his chief of staff to get in touch with Kim Ho, secretary-general of the United Nations, and ask what he could do to press the UN to intervene in the situation in Equatorial Guinea, and then to call Pierre Kellen, president of the International Red Cross, and ask what the United States could do to help on a humanitarian level.