Allan Folsom - The Hadrian Memorandum

4:52 A.M.

They were ninety miles out. Marten’s Cessna, D-VKRD, had already been cleared to enter the Málaga landing pattern. By White’s calculation, that should put the Cessna on the ground in about fifteen minutes, or approximately 5:07 A.M.

He had one man in the control tower and two in the terminal, one at the entrance from the tarmac, the other at the exit onto the street. A fourth and fifth waited in cars just outside, one near the taxi line, the other near the car rental agencies.

Once Marten landed, the plane would taxi to the terminal area, where he and Anne would disembark. Assuming the Berlin police hadn’t put out a Europe-wide APB for Marten, which would have the Spanish police closely watching arrivals at every airport, the two would simply enter the terminal, walk through the green NOTHING TO DECLARE customs door, and go into the terminal proper. There they would either take a taxi, rent a car from an airport agency, or use some other form of transportation yet to be determined. Anne might even have a car waiting. Whatever the case, once they left the terminal they would be followed by one or both of the men outside-and soon thereafter by himself, Patrice, and Irish Jack traveling in a dark green SUV that would be waiting for them at the edge of the tarmac, an SUV courtesy of Spitfire Ltd., a Madrid-based private security contractor that served most of the Iberian Peninsula-Spain, Portugal, Andorra, Gibraltar, and a tiny French territory in the Pyrenees-and was owned by a former SAS major, one of his closest friends.

For no particular reason, White thought of his father, Sir Edward Raines. For everything he had-money, political and military esteem, legitimate family of wife, daughter, two other sons, three grandchildren-the one thing he did not have was the Victoria Cross, which was the honor White treasured most. It was not only hugely prestigious, it put his name ahead of his father’s in British military history. But while queen and country had proudly and publicly saluted him for it, his father had not. He had been invited to the ceremony but had not come. Nor had he phoned, faxed, e-mailed, or written. It had been a golden opportunity for him to recognize his bastard son without ever saying it. The simplest of gestures. A handshake, a look in the eye, a word of congratulations would have been enough. It was the prize he coveted most of all, but it had not happened.

And now, at this moment, and for a reason he was unable to understand, the lack of recognition pained him more than it ever had in his life. It was a hurt that had been assuaged a hundred times over in combat when the face of the enemy had suddenly become that of his father and he’d struck at it with every ounce of fury he had. It was why he had been so successful in battle. Why he had received the Victoria Cross and the sea of Distinguished Service Order medals. It was why he would succeed again in the hours and minutes immediately ahead, because this time the enemy who would wear the face of Sir Edward Raines would be the person who stood between himself and ruin. Nicholas Marten.

“Cessna D-VKRD, you are in the landing pattern. Please change radio frequency to 267.5.” The voice of an air controller suddenly crackled over his headset.

“D-VKRD. Going to new frequency, 267.5,” he heard the Cessna’s female pilot reply.

“Copy to 267.5, D-VKRD.”

Abruptly White’s radio went to static as the Cessna pilot changed radio frequency. He took off the headphones and looked over his shoulder to Patrice and Irish Jack in the seats behind him.

“They’re on approach, gentlemen. Workday’s about to begin,” he said sharply. “Saddle up.”

4:55 A.M.

CESSNA, D-VKRD, ON APPROACH TO

MÁLAGA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT. 5:02 A.M.

Marten looked at his watch, counting down the time. Anne was awake now, watching him in the dimly lit cabin.

“Where do we go from here?” she asked quietly.

“That will depend on Brigitte.” Abruptly he undid his seat belt and climbed into the copilot’s seat next to her, just as he had an hour before. Below he could just make out the cloud deck in the beam of the plane’s landing lights. It was steel gray and forbidding, stretching out like some enormous glacier.

“How long before we’re in it?”

“About eight seconds.”

Marten glanced over his shoulder at Anne, then back out the windshield. He held his breath and counted down. Five, four, three, two-Then they were in it. The clouds swirled around them. He turned to Brigitte.

“This is what I want you to do.”

5:05 A.M.

SIMCO FALCON, 3C-B797K, 5:12 A.M.

Conor White felt the main landing gear hit; then the plane’s nose angled over, and the front gear touched the runway. He saw the lighted terminal flash past, then heard the scream of the three Garrett turbofan engines as the pilot put them into reverse thrust. The plane slowed quickly. Another few seconds and they were at the end of the runway and coming back around. Instantly he was out of his seat and at the window looking for the Cessna as they taxied for the terminal. Patrice and Irish Jack were up, too, their weapons packed away in a pair of dark green and yellow sports-equipment bags, peering out, ready to go. All they saw was darkness and parked aircraft.

“Where the fuck is he?” Irish Jack was on edge. “Where the hell did he go?”

White was already on his cell phone talking to his man in the tower. “Where’s the Cessna that just landed?”

“The landing was aborted at the last second.”

“What?”

“The pilot reported radio trouble. Said she would refile a landing request.”

“Where did she go?”

“Don’t know. Her radio is still out.”

White glanced at Patrice and Irish Jack. “Son of a bitch used the cloud deck to dance out of here. He knows he’s being followed.” He turned back to the phone. “Refile us for immediate takeoff, then get me a reading of the Cessna’s transponder code. I want a location of that aircraft.”

“It may take a little time to find, sir. There is a lot of traffic in the area. Cessna’s not the only airplane up there.”

“My friend.” Conor White’s voice was filled with rage, “I can’t follow a plane when I don’t know where the hell it went! Find it. Find it fast! Find it now!” Conor White clicked off and looked to Patrice and Irish Jack. “Shit!” he said.

5:24 A.M.

LEARJET 55, FORTY MILES OUT FROM MÁLAGA.

AIRSPEED 310 MPH. ALTITUDE 14,200 FEET. SAME TIME.

Emil Franck turned his laptop off and then back on and waited for it to reboot, just as he had done moments earlier. The green dot giving the Cessna’s position had suddenly disappeared from the screen, and he held his breath, hoping the problem was with the laptop’s software. Up front, he could see Kovalenko talking excitedly to the pilots and knew the software had nothing to do with it. They’d had the Cessna on their screen, too, and called for Kovalenko seconds after it had vanished from Franck’s. Clearly something major had occurred. Abruptly Kovalenko left the pilots and came toward.

“Marten’s aware that he’s being tracked,” he said. “The Cessna was on approach, then suddenly veered off in a cloud deck and reported radio trouble. There is something of a disorder in the Málaga tower as a result.”

“The transmitter was new. It was functioning perfectly.”

“And then it went dead. Almost at the exact same moment the pilot aborted her landing. Either it was found and disabled or simply stopped working at a con ve nient moment. But whatever happened makes no difference. The Cessna is gone. Málaga tower is attempting to locate it by its transponder reading, but it will take time. Maybe a few minutes, maybe a few hours. Who knows?”