Allan Folsom - The Hadrian Memorandum

“Looking for what?”

“Huh?” he brought his attention back to her.

“You said you were looking for something. What was it?”

“Garlic.”

“Garlic?”

“Ornamental garlic plants, Tulbaghia violacea . They’re growing here somewhere. I smelled them, I just couldn’t find them.”

Anne was incredulous. “We’re trying to get out of here and you’re looking for plants?”

“You may remember that flora interests me a great deal. It’s my profession. The reason I was in Bioko. It’s also a world I’d be very happy to get back to, and the sooner the better. So yes, garlic. You don’t believe me, take a deep breath, tell me what you smell.”

“You’re serious.”

“You act as if I’m making it up. Go ahead, sniff.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

“Sniff.”

“Fuck,” she said and then inhaled.

“What do you smell?”

“Garlic.”

Marten grinned. “Thank you.”

9:30 A.M.

The car was a silver Opel Astra with an automatic transmission. Marten took the N125 highway toward Portimão, some forty miles west. If Hauptkommissar Franck had put out an EU all points bulletin to apprehend Anne, or if her bank accounts were being electronically monitored, so far nothing had happened in the short time since she’d used a credit card at the car rental agency. And if whoever was following-CIA operatives or Conor White and maybe this Patrice-they hadn’t made themselves known either, at least that he was aware of. Still, he kept close watch on the rearview mirror.

“Okay. There’s just the two of us, we have a car, and we’re on our way,” Anne said abruptly, the light banter of before gone. “Where the hell are we going?”

Marten knew he had stalled as long as he could. “Rental agent give you a map?”

“Yes.”

“Open it and look for Praia da Rocha. It’s a beach town near Portimão.”

“Praia da Rocha.”

“You know it?”

“No.”

“Neither do I.”

9:35 A.M.

LEARJET 55, ON APPROACH TO FARO INTERNATIONAL

AIRPORT. AIRSPEED 190 MPH. ALTITUDE 2,420 FEET.

SAME TIME.

After thirty years of police work Hauptkommissar Emil Franck’s connections across Europe ran deep. Some were legitimate, some criminal, others somewhere in between. Marten’s Cessna had barely touched down at Faro when Franck learned about it from the Policia Judiciária at the airport, who quickly made several calls spreading the information. It worked like a charm.

A cousin of Judiciária police inspector Catarina Melo Tavares Santos was a desk employee of the Auto Europe branch in Faro’s Montenegro district. Santos’s physical description of Anne Tidrow fit perfectly with the woman who had rented a silver Opel Astra barely half an hour before. She’d had to wait fifteen minutes until her supervisor went on break before she could access the rental records and confirm the identity of the Opel’s renter. At the same time, she noted the car’s license number, then went outside, clicked on her cell phone, and spoke directly with her cousin. It was Inspector Santos who was on the phone with Hauptkommissar Franck now.

“New silver Opel Astra, four door, license number 93-AA-71,” Santos said, “rented in Montenegro at 8:57 A.M. by one Anne Tidrow of Houston, Texas. Marked down for an open-ended rental. Suggested time frame, twenty-four to forty-eight hours.”

“Destination?”

“None was given, sir.”

“Obrigado , Inspector,” he said. “Obrigado.” Thank you.

Franck clicked off and looked at Kovalenko. “They are thirty minutes to an hour ahead of us,” he said with a quiet confidence that bordered on condescension. “A car will be waiting when we touch down. I suggest whatever call you need to make, you do it now. Moscow must be waiting to hear from you.”

“Yes, Hauptkommissar, they must be.” Kovalenko’s eyes zeroed in on Franck’s. “Breathlessly.”

9:43 A.M.

PORTIMÃO. 10:18 A.M.

Marten turned the Opel south, circumventing the city. He’d judiciously watched the rearview mirror for most of the trip. If they were being followed there was still no sign of it. Nor had there been any close-in air traffic, helicopters or civilian aircraft, to suggest they were being watched from above. Satellite tracking was always a possibility via the car’s GPS system, but satellite operators would have had to have been alerted, and that was something that took time and required several layers of authorization before it would be put into effect. The thing was, at this point, they seemed to be ahead of their pursuers, and so the complications almost didn’t matter. He was too close to the end to do anything but go for it and hope everything worked out. Still, he knew he had to be ever cautious of Anne and remember how much was at stake all the way around. If he could wish for anything now it would be a gun, the more powerful the better.

10:20 A.M.

The distance from Portimão to Praia da Rocha was short, two miles at best. They were traveling south under a high sun. Mist rolling in from the sea intensified the brightness and gave everything a dangerous glare, making it hard to see without squinting. To their left was the wide estuary of the Rio Arade that flowed from the inland mountains to Portimão and from there into the Atlantic between Praia da Rocha on the western shore and Ferragudo on the eastern. They were almost there, and Marten felt his pulse rise in anticipation. All they had to do now was drive into the city and, with luck, locate Avenida Tomás Cabreira and then this Jacob Cádiz at a livros usados , which Marten had roughly translated as a used-book store.

10:32 A.M.

Avenida Tomás Cabreira turned out to be Praia da Rocha’s main drag. It was jammed with hotels and shops and restaurants and overlooked jagged sea cliffs and a beach far below that was dotted with rows of bright umbrellas and an uncountable number of semi-dressed beachgoers.

10:50 A.M.

They had driven the avenue itself twice and now were doing it again. What they saw this time was what they had seen before. Traffic, tourists, the Hotel da Rocha , the Hotel Jupiter , restaurant La Dolce Vita , restaurant A Portuguesa , restaurant Esplanada Oriental , bars, outdoor cafés, curio shops, a bank, a pharmacy, and several bakeries. But no bookstores, new or used.

“Used books. You’re sure?” Anne asked.

“That’s what Theo Haas told me.”

“No name for it.”

“All he said was livros usados, Avenida Tomás Cabreira.’ ” Marten knew he couldn’t expect to just show up and go right to it. Still, it should have been easy enough to find on a main street like Tomás Cabreira. But clearly it wasn’t here. So where was it? Closed? Moved to another location? Or had it never been here? Had Haas wholly distrusted him and sent him on a road to nowhere? If so, had he come all this way for nothing? Were the photographs still somewhere in Berlin?

“Christ,” Marten swore under his breath. He glanced around. A group of teenagers waved cheerfully, no doubt tickled by what seemed to be lost tourists who were chugging down the street for the third time in less than ten minutes. The driver of a car behind them honked impatiently, then suddenly sped up, passed in traffic, and cut sharply in front of them. Still no used-book store. Marten looked at his watch: 10:55 A.M.

The longer it took to unravel the puzzle, the more important time itself became. Slowed as they were and with no goal in sight, they were giving whoever was following them every opportunity to find out where they had landed and then pick up their trail. If they were CIA they would have had assets on the ground to begin with. Assets who could easily tap into car rental agency records, find Anne’s name and what make of car she had rented and its license number. Once they had that, finding them would relatively easy; then all they had to do was lie back and watch until they recovered the photos. Then what? If one of them happened to be Conor White, they could look to the same fate that had befallen Marita and her medical students in Spain. More than ever he wished he had a gun.