Allan Folsom - The Hadrian Memorandum

7:12 P.M.

“I don’t like so many people involved,” Franck stood on the sidewalk outside the building on Platz der Luftbrücke talking on his cell phone, his back to passersby. “It will be a billiard game, you know that, one playing off two, two playing off three, who knows where it stops. Unpredictable, volatile at best, dangerous all around.”

“You are at your best when it’s like that.” Elsa’s throaty voice came back to him. “You should enjoy it, you always have. Besides, they expect it. It’s why you were called and not someone else.”

“Yes. Alright. I understand,” he said finally. “Yes. Yes. Of course.” With that he clicked off.

Hauptkommissar Emil Franck’s persona had been established early in his career as that of a man who was most successful when he worked alone. Between the ages of twenty-four and twenty-seven he had single-handedly ended the vocations of nineteen public enemies. Ten were in prison, the rest dead. The media, even his colleagues, both then and now referred to him as Berlin’s “Cowboy,” its “Dirty Harry,” and it was that role he would play to Detectives Bohlen and Prosser and the others in the situation room when he returned. Something had come up, he would tell them. Something he would take care of himself. Their instructions would be to continue on the course he had laid out for them that morning, an intense continuation of the massive and very public manhunt for the killer of Theo Haas. There would be no announcement that he had left. The media would be told only that he was coordinating the effort from his headquarters office and was unavailable for comment. No other details would be given. It was that simple.

RITZ-CARLTON BERLIN, SUITE 1422. 8:08 P.M.

Sy Wirth clicked off one of the two BlackBerrys he’d carried with him since he left Houston and picked up a freshly sharpened number 2 Ticonderoga 1388 pencil. He made a brief note on the last of the half-dozen yellow legal pads on the writing table in front of him, on which he had scribbled twenty-odd memos, the result of several hours’ worth of business calls. Done, he looked at his watch, then picked up the BlackBerry he’d just used, the one he called his everyday phone and utilized for business and personal calls. He was about to punch in a number when there was a knock at the door.

“Yes,” he said impatiently.

“Room service, Mr. Wirth.”

Wirth got up and opened the door. A uniformed waiter pushed a rolling table with a covered platter, a carafe of coffee, and a bottle of mineral water into the room. He was starting to set it up when Wirth intervened.

“I’ll take care of it,” he said brusquely and gave him a twenty-euro bill.

“Thank you, Mr. Wirth. Guten abend.” The man nodded and left, closing the door behind him.

Wirth lifted the silver cover from the platter, glanced at the club sandwich beneath it. Ignoring it, he went back to the desk, picked up the everyday BlackBerry, punched in a number, and waited for it to ring through.

“Yes.” Dimitri Korostin’s voice filtered through his earpiece.

“Well?”

“You sound nervous, Sy.”

“How long are you going to keep me waiting around? What’s the status of our project?”

Korostin laughed. “Your status is that you’re anxious and on edge. My status is that I’m getting a blow job. Afterward I’m going to dinner with friends. I think my lifestyle is better than yours, Sy. Excuse me a minute.” Suddenly there was dead air, as if he’d clicked off. A full two minutes later he came back on. “Sy, you there?”

“Fuck you and your blow job.”

“Relax, Sy. Like they say, your order has been processed. I will have information for you before midnight. Fair enough? I wouldn’t want to disappoint you and risk losing the Magellan/Santa Cruz-Tarija gas field. Would I?”

With that Korostin clicked off, leaving Sy Wirth alone with his two BlackBerrys, half-dozen legal pads, coffee, mineral water, club sandwich, and unease.

8:20 P.M

Hauptkommissar Emil Franck turned his Audi down a service road near Tegel Airport in the last rays of warm summer-evening sunshine. Sunshine that, after the gray skies and drizzle of the morning should have cheered him a little at least. But he was in no mood for cheer. Apprehending Marten for the killing of Theo Haas had been one thing, but since the photographs and the rebellion in Equatorial Guinea had come into play it was clear that something far more complex than the murder of a Nobel laureate was taking place. As he had said on the phone, it would be a billiard game. Kovalenko was already in it. Moscow was watching. God only knew where it would go from there.

Ahead he could see a maroon Opel parked at the side of the road next to a security fence. All around was the thunder and whine of jet aircraft approaching or taking off from the airfield. He slowed, then pulled up behind the Opel and stopped. Two men were in it. Kovalenko and a driver. The Russian said something to the other man, then opened the door and got out and walked back to the Audi.

“So, our friend is now airborne and in a piston-engine Cessna,” Kovalenko said as he slid in next to Franck.

“Fuselage registration D-VKRD,” Franck said. “Flight plan filed to Málaga. They will have to stop for fuel at least once.”

“You’ve done well, Hauptkommissar. I know how valuable informants can be. I trust you will see that he or she is well rewarded.”

“Things have a way of taking care of themselves.”

Kovalenko smiled. “True, Hauptkommissar. It is-” Kovalenko’s voice was drowned out by the roar of a Lufthansa Airbus taking off. He waited until the sound died away and then continued. “It is safe to leave your car here?”

“Why?”

Kovalenko smiled again. “Nothing against Berlin law enforcement. It’s just that I have a driver. We’ll take mine.”

“To where? We’re leaving from here. From Tegel, yes?”

“No, Schönefeld.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I cannot think as Moscow does.” Kovalenko shrugged. “What can I tell you? You should see the hotels they put me up in.”

Franck studied him for the briefest moment. He didn’t like the sudden change of arrangements. Kovalenko was supposed to have arranged for a private jet that would leave from here, from Tegel. Now the plan had shifted to Schönefeld Airport in Brandenburg, south of the city. It would be a waste of time to ask why. He’d been through this kind of thing often enough in the past, in “the old days,” before the wall was torn down. One didn’t ask why, just did what Moscow ordered.

“Alright,” he said finally. They got out of the Audi, Franck pulled a small overnight bag from the rear seat, then closed the door and locked it. Thirty seconds later they were in the Opel and heading south toward Schönefeld Airport.

8:32 P.M.

CESSNA 340, D-VKRD, SOMEWHERE OVER

SOUTHERN GERMANY. CRUISING SPEED 190 MPH.

ALTITUDE 26,170 FEET. 9:35 P.M.

They had been flying for nearly two and a half hours, with Anne and Marten sitting impassively in plush leather seats behind the pilot, the blond, handsome Brigitte. Before they took off she had courteously filled them in with her full name-Brigitte Marie Reier-and a little of her history. She was thirty-seven and had flown in the German air force. She was a single mother of twelve-year-old twins. The three lived “temporarily” with her brother, his wife, and their two children, and everyone got along, more or less. And that had been that. Afterward she was back to the business at hand, telling them there was bottled water and sandwiches and a thermos of coffee in the pullout tray beyond the seats. There was a tiny toilet facility between the pilot and passenger compartments, she said, but if they could, they might be better off waiting until they made a fuel stop-or stops, depending on head-or crosswinds-and they could pee or whatever at that time. That had ended it. Immediately she’d helped them on board, climbed into the cockpit, then started the engines and taken off. Little or nothing had been said since.