Allan Folsom - The Hadrian Memorandum

“You think Hadrian should be advised?”

“Probably. But again I don’t know. Hadrian and SimCo have their own arrangements. If what’s going on here has to do with Striker, I’m completely in the dark about it.”

“Have you heard from him since you arrived?”

“No. Not yet.”

“If he asked you to meet him the way he did, I’d say Hadrian should be advised right away. Let them get in the middle of it, or at the least advise us as to what’s going on. Want me to call Loyal Truex?”

“No, I’ll do it. He still with Joe Ryder in Iraq?”

“Yes.”

“Go back to whatever you were doing, Arnie. I’ll be in touch later.”

“Good luck.”

“Indeed.”

Wirth clicked off just as his breakfast came.

“Will there be anything else, sir?” his waiter asked.

Wirth looked up. “Not just now, thank you.”

“Yes, sir.”

Wirth watched him go, then picked up the BlackBerry, looked at it, and set it back down. Loyal Truex was in Iraq. Wirth’s story would be that he had tried to get through to him but couldn’t get a connection and so would try again later. Meaning no call would be made to Truex until the photographs had been recovered and Nicholas Marten and Anne Tidrow were dead, with Conor White and his men in the custody of Portuguese authorities charged with their killing and the suspicion of their involvement in the Madrid farmhouse murders. All of it topped, as Wirth would put it to Truex, by the chilling sense that because White had asked him to meet him there and because of what had happened to Anne, he’d meant to kill him, too. That way, and quite clearly, Truex would have been informed of the extent of Conor White’s derangement.

11:09 A.M.

PRAIA DA ROCHA, LIVROS USADOS GRANADA. 11:12 A.M.

Bright and steamy hot outside, inside the Granada used-book store was dark and cool with classical music playing softly in the background. There were five small, interconnecting rooms, each with floor-to-ceiling shelves and large floor bins, all of them crammed to overflowing with thousands of used books in a dozen or more languages.

A thirty-something woman with short dark hair and wearing a light summer dress was behind the checkout counter as Anne and Marten came in. Beyond her Marten could count eight people scattered throughout the rooms, browsing, reading. If there were more he couldn’t see them.

He casually slipped a Livros Usados Granada business card from a wooden holder near the door and was about to approach the woman at the checkout counter when a roly-poly man in thick glasses with a great mane of gray hair appeared from a back room. He was probably in his late fifties and wore a black short-sleeved polo shirt with LIVROS USADOS GRANADA stenciled in white over the left-hand breast pocket. Marten could see two worn volumes tucked under his arm as he passed from one room to the next coming toward them. When he reached the adjoining room, he stopped to converse with a slim blond woman in white jeans.

Anne nodded toward him. “Cádiz?” she mouthed.

“Maybe,” Marten said quietly. “Watch the door,” he warned, then went into the other room.

Entering, he looked around absently, then poked through some books in a center-of-the-room bin while the man and the blond woman carried on a conversation in Portuguese. Finally the woman decided she wanted neither book, thanked the man, who by now clearly appeared to be the proprietor, and promptly left. He watched her go, then turned to take the volumes back to wherever he had gotten them. As he did, Marten approached him. “Excuse me, do you speak English?”

The man turned back. “What is it you want to know?” he said quietly in what sounded like everyday American English.

“Are you Jacob Cádiz?”

“Why?” He looked at Marten carefully.

“A friend sent me to find him.”

“Man or woman?”

“A man.”

“My name is Stump Logan. Originally from Chicago. What do you want with Jacob Cádiz?”

“As I said, a friend-”

“Who?” Logan cut him off. “What’s his name?”

“Does Cádiz work here?”

“What is your friend’s name? Why did you come to my shop looking for Cádiz?”

Marten glanced at Anne, standing near the cashier in the outer room. Roly-poly and bespectacled or not, Stump Logan was no pushover. And he wasn’t just a guy transplanted from the Windy City. His edge, the way he looked at you, gave him the feel of a rough-hewn social worker or maybe an old Chicago cop, or something in between. Whatever it was, Marten felt he had to take the chance and tell him the truth. He looked around and then back to Logan.

“My name is Nicholas Marten. Theo Haas gave me Cádiz’s name and pointed me here to your store. I was with him in Berlin just before he was killed. The police think I did it, but I didn’t. I knew his brother, too, Father Willy Dorhn. I met with him just a few days ago in Bioko. I was there when an army patrol killed him. Theo sent me here to find Jacob Cádiz. He said he would have something I might find useful. It has to do with the civil war in Equatorial Guinea.”

Stump Logan stared at Marten for a long moment, reading him. Suddenly he nodded toward Anne. “She with you?”

“Yes.”

“Get her and come with me.”

Stump Logan’s backroom office was as full of books as the rest of his shop-piled on shelves, on the floor, everywhere and anywhere there was room. Still he had managed to squeeze in an old steel desk and chair and two folding chairs in front of it. Logan ushered Marten and Anne toward them, studying one and then the other as they sat down.

“I knew Theo for thirty years,” he said finally. “He wouldn’t have told you to look up Cádiz on a lark. What he sent you to find I don’t know.” Logan reached for a note pad, scrawled an address on it, and gave it to Marten. “Number 517 Avenida João Paulo II. Follow it to the end, then look for an old wooden gate and a gravel drive down to the beach. That’s Cádiz’s house. He won’t be there. How you get in is your business.”

“Thank you, Mr. Logan. I mean it sincerely.” Marten stood, and Anne got up with him. “If anybody comes, we were never here.”

“Mr. Marten.” Stump Logan peered through his thick glasses. “I knew Father Willy very well. I visited him in Bioko more than once. The two treasures of his life were his brother and the people he served in Equatorial Guinea.”

“I saw that for myself. I understand,” Marten said.

“So do I. Theo Haas did not send you here without reason.”

11:25 A.M.

HOTEL LARGO. 11:37 A.M.

Wirth was back in his room and had just finished brushing his teeth when his BlackBerry sounded. Immediately he answered.

“Yes.”

“Praia da Rocha. Four-door silver Opel Astra, license number 93-AA-71,” Korostin said tersely. “By the time you reach it my people will have found Marten. By the terms of our agreement, Josiah, I will tell you where.”

“Thank you.” Wirth clicked off.

It was time to move.

He went into the bedroom and picked up the blue-tape Blackberry. Two calls would be made from it. The first would be to Conor White, letting him know where Marten had gone, giving him a description of the car, and telling him he would give him an exact location in Praia da Rocha when he had it. The second would be made once he knew White had reached Praia da Rocha. It would be a text message to an FBI in for mant in Spain arranged by his friend in the FBI’s Houston bureau who had originated the transmission system for the blue-tape BlackBerry. The text would be a simple “OK.” At that point the informant would call Spanish authorities, implicating Conor White in the Madrid farmhouse murders and telling them he was armed and dangerous and thought to be in Praia da Rocha, Portugal.