Allan Folsom - The Hadrian Memorandum

Oil?

Maybe.

At the moment it was the god of everyone on the planet. But something didn’t fit. SimCo was arming the rebels, not trying to protect Striker’s workers from them.

“The photographs, tovarich.” Kovalenko turned the Glock automatic toward Anne and the envelope in her hands. “Any number of interested parties thought he might have mailed them. They were right. Let’s get out of this sun and see what they are.”

Marten looked at him and then at the Glock. “After all this time you need that with me?”

Kovalenko smiled. “For now, tovarich, I think it is best.”

12:35 P.M.

Ninety seconds later they were inside the house, the front door closed, standing in the hallway. Franck’s submachine gun was slung over Kovalenko’s shoulder, the Glock still in his hand. Anne and Marten stood in front of him, the envelope open, the photos spread out on the wooden table. Marten turned them over one by one.

“Him,” Kovalenko said suddenly and pointed a finger at a photo of Conor White. “This man is Conor White.”

“I know,” Marten said.

“He’s one of those following you.”

“As I suspected.”

“You know him, then?”

“I met him in passing.” Marten glanced at Anne.

“Be very careful, tovarich. He is a highly decorated former British combat officer with a great deal to lose personally if these”-he touched the stack of photos-“are made public.”

“I know that, too.”

Anne was staring at Kovalenko. “Who else is following us?”

“Two of his fighters.” Kovalenko reached out a finger and pushed aside the photos until he found the one he wanted, the one showing Patrice and Irish Jack in a helicopter doorway. “These.”

Anne exchanged glances with Marten, then looked back to Kovalenko. He wasn’t telling her everything. “You said ‘others.’ Who are they? Your people? Who and how many?”

“As far as I know, only one, Ms. Tidrow. The head of your own company.”

“Sy Wirth?”

Kovalenko nodded. “He is, or at least was, traveling separately and feeding information about your position to White and his men. Where any of them are now I don’t know.”

“Where did Wirth get this timely information he was passing on?” Marten said, then deliberately looked at Anne.

“Don’t even think it,” she snapped. “I haven’t talked to him since we were in Malabo.” She nodded at Kovalenko. “Why don’t you ask him how he knows all this.”

Kovalenko smiled easily. “Moscow.”

There was no smile from Marten. “I should be surprised, but I’m not. I suppose Moscow knew about Jacob Cádiz, too.”

“It took a little time, but yes.”

“Why would Father Willy send the photographs to him and not his brother? Was he that close a friend?”

Kovalenko cocked his head and grinned. “You honestly don’t know.”

“Know what?”

Kovalenko’s free hand swept around, indicating the house. “This is the place Theo Haas came to work and get out of the Berlin cold and the public spotlight of a Nobel laureate. He didn’t want people coming around bothering him, so he used the name Jacob Cádiz. He spoke Portuguese well; few people knew.” Abruptly his expression changed. He put the photos aside and picked up the folded white envelope with the camera’s digital memory card inside. “What is this?”

Marten didn’t answer.

Kovalenko unfolded it and slid out the card. “Ah,” he said, smiling, “the cake’s frosting.” Suddenly his eyes found Marten’s. “You’ve looked at its contents.”

“Some, not all.”

“Where is the computer you were using to view it?”

“In the other room,” Marten said quietly, still trying to understand what Kovalenko was doing here and why Moscow was involved.

“I was assigned before I knew you were in the middle of it,” Kovalenko said as if he had read Marten’s thoughts. “Moscow has been watching the developments in Equatorial Guinea closely. She is always intrigued when a Western oil company shows undue interest in an area and begins building up its operation there, especially in West Africa, where there are potentially large untapped reserves. If something should prove of value it would be strategically unfortunate if other countries, especially the Chinese, got to bid on it first. I’m sure you can appreciate that kind of thinking. It’s merely good business.”

“So one would think.”

12:54 P.M.

Marten glanced at Kovalenko, then powered up Jacob Cádiz’s computer and slid the memory card into its port. Anne was in a chair to his right. Kovalenko sat on a stool to one side and behind them, the Glock in his hand, Franck’s Heckler & Koch machine gun still dangling from his shoulder.

“Let’s see what we have, tovarich,” he said as the screen came to life. Marten touched the mouse, and a photograph popped up on the monitor. It had been taken with a long lens and apparently from a hidden vantage point in the brush. It was a portrait of a bizarre picnic in the jungle. Six white wicker chairs were pulled up to a long table covered with a white linen cloth, two on either side, one at either end. Fine china, silverware, and expensive wineglasses sat atop the table. White-gloved soldiers in the dress uniform of the Army of Equatorial Guinea stood by as waiters. Another of them carved a huge roast on a serving table nearby. Two more, in full dress and seemingly of high rank, were seated along one side of the linen-covered table. Opposite them were Conor White’s lieutenants, Patrice and Irish Jack, dressed in their trademark tight black T-shirts and camouflage pants. Several more SimCo mercenaries stood in the background, their muscular arms crossed over their chests. All had buzz cuts and wore wraparound sunglasses and had automatic pistols strapped to their thighs.

Conor White himself wore a tailored white suit with an open-collared starched white shirt and sat at one end of the table. Another man sat at the far end, his back to the camera.

“Go to the next,” Kovalenko said.

Marten touched the mouse, and the next photo came up. In it the other man was revealed. He was older, had jet black eyes, and wore the dress uniform of an Equatorial Guinean army general.

“Mariano,” Marten said, surprised.

“Generalissimo Mariano Vargas Fuente. You know him?” Kovalenko marveled.

“I had the pleasure of being interrogated by a unit of the Equatorial Guinean army. He sat in on the party.”

“You were lucky not to be butchered on the spot. He’s Chilean. Was once an officer in the Directorate of National Intelligence under Augusto Pinochet. He was personally responsible for the death squads and the unspeakable horrors they committed. Thousands of people vanished under his watch, and then he suddenly-”

“Disappeared into the jungles of Central America,” Marten finished for him. “Or so I was told. How did he get to Equatorial Guinea and when?”

“He was living under an assumed name in southern Spain. That was until your friend Conor White recruited him for the Equatorial Guinean army.”

“White?”

“Yes, but secretly. President Tiombe thinks he did it alone. Sought out Mariano and paid him a fortune to run the E.G. counterinsurgency.”

“Why?” Marten was mystified.

“For Mr. Tiombe to demonstrate to the people that this is how he handles troublemakers.”

“He doesn’t know White set it up?”

“Probably not.”

Marten looked sharply to Anne. “Did Striker Oil order White to arrange the Mariano contract?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it was Sy Wirth’s doing with Loyal Truex pulling strings. Maybe White did it for his own reasons. However it happened, I had no knowledge of it.”