Allan Folsom - The Hadrian Memorandum

Suddenly something large and black appeared in front of Marten and he was shoved back hard against his seat. The next instant brought a nauseating wave of hot doggie breath. Bruno had suddenly leapt up, throwing both forepaws against Marten’s chest, knocking him backward and holding him there. Now his large, drooly face was inches from Marten’s and he was staring at him with a look of deep sympathy, as if somehow he had sensed the fear and turmoil going on inside him and had determined to share his concern.

“Thanks, buddy, you’re a real pal,” Marten said gratefully, then lifted the Newfoundland’s big paws and eased him back to the floor. Afterward, he patted him gently on the head. “If I was going home I’d ask Stump if I could take you with me. Unfortunately, I’ve got other things to do first.”

3:48 P.M.

LISBON. STILL SUNDAY, JUNE 6. 5:12 P.M.

They came in on the A2 Auto-estrada , passing the towns of Palmela, Fernão Ferro, and then Almada on the southern bank of the Tagus River. Then, still in a crush of heavy traffic, they were across the towering 25th of April Bridge-an edifice that was a near replica of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge-and into the city, staying on the main highway, Avenida da Ponte.

Marten leaned forward to talk to Stump Logan. “We’re looking for the Bairro Alto section. Rua do-”

Instantly Logan put up a hand for silence, then yanked off his iPod headset. “Don’t,” he said sharply, looking at Marten in the mirror. “I don’t want to know, period. Area, street address, who you’re meeting. Nothing at all.” With that he slipped the headset back on and drove on in silence.

Four or five miles later he took an exit near the Zoological Gardens, then turned left and then right onto Rua Professor Lima Basto. Another twenty yards and he pulled to the curb and stopped.

“Down there and around the corner”-he pointed a finger at the windshield-“is Terminal Rodoviário de Lisboa, a central bus terminal where the motor coaches from the Algarve come in. Get out and walk to it; go in from the coach entrance and then out the front door. Nobody will stop you, unless by now the police have the German policeman’s body and your faces are plastered all over. If they do, you’re as good as dead anyway. But if they don’t and somebody sees you and remembers you later, they’ll think you came into the city by bus. The police come to me afterward and ask if I was in Lisbon, I’ll tell them yes, I was, I had to pick up some books from a fellow used-book storekeeper-which I will do before I leave. Unless we had plain bad luck with those motorcycle cops, there’ll be no way they can prove I drove you here. All I can tell them is that you were in my store looking for a Jacob Cádiz and that you came back later looking for my help in getting out of the city. To where, you didn’t say. I told you there was nothing I could do. You left, and that was the last I saw of you.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Marten said.

“Good. Now, if you don’t mind, I have some books to pick up before I head home.”

They left it that way, with Anne and Marten on the street and Stump Logan and his dogs driving off in his thirty-odd-year-old VW bus, having wished them good luck and saying he was glad to have been of service.

Marten glanced around, then started them quickly down the sidewalk toward the bus terminal.

“This Bairro Alto section that you asked Logan about,” Anne said. “You know where it is?”

“No, we’re going to have to find it. Get a street map or something.”

“What’s there?”

“A safe house.”

“Safe house?”

“Yes.”

“And then tomorrow a meeting with Joe Ryder.”

“Yes.”

“The ‘old girlfriend’ you were on the phone with in Logan’s office. She set it up.”

Marten nodded.

“Who the hell is she that she can orchestrate all this?”

“Just a friend.”

“No, not just a friend. Someone who can pull top-level strings, and quickly. Things like this don’t just happen.”

Marten glanced around again, watching the traffic, looking for police.

“Who are you really, Mr. Nicholas Marten? Who do you work for?”

“Fitzsimmons and Justice. Landscape architects. Manchester, England.”

“That’s not a good enough answer.”

“For now it will have to do.”

5:20 P.M.

FOUR SEASONS HOTEL RITZ LISBON,

RUA RODRIGO DA FONSECA. SAME TIME.

CIA Chief of Station (COS)/Lisbon Jeremy Moyer worked Sundays when he had to, and this Sunday was one of them. Four and a half hours earlier he’d taken a call at home from Newhan Black, deputy director of the CIA, asking him to go into the embassy and pull up a file on a case officer named Fernando Coelho and when he had it to call him back right away.

What it meant was “Go to the office immediately and call me back over a secure line.” Clearly whatever Black wanted to discuss on this summer Sunday afternoon-one o’clock in Lisbon, eight in the morning at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia-was urgent.

Twenty minutes later Moyer was in his private office, door locked, secure phone in hand. When they established contact Newhan Black’s first words were: “I’m not going to tell you everything that’s going on, and it’s probably better that you don’t know. But this is what I want done.”

Now, at nearly five thirty in the afternoon, Moyer sat at a small cocktail table in the Ritz Bar sipping a Dubonnet on ice and chatting with forty-year-old Debra Wynn. Wynn was chief of the U.S. State Department’s Regional Security Office and, like Moyer, based in the U.S. Embassy/Lisbon. She was responsible for coordinating all security for the embassy, visiting guests, and dignitaries. In this case they had a CODEL, a congressional delegation, in the person of Congressman Joe Ryder of New York, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, coming into the country.

“What I would like, Debra, is to go over the Ryder situation.” Fifty-one-year-old Moyer fit well into the hotel’s posh surroundings-neatly trimmed graying hair, navy blazer, pin-striped shirt open at the neck, khaki trousers, oxblood loafers-one embassy official having drinks with another at the hotel where an important U.S. politician was due to arrive the next day. “The congressman, coming here as he is, makes him a very high-profile target. That he’s passing through on his way back from Iraq doesn’t help. As you know, I would have preferred to have him stay at the embassy.”

Wynn looked at Moyer directly. She was handsome and athletic, a twenty-year State Department veteran who’d come up through the ranks, as Moyer had. The difference was, her personality was far more guarded. While he drank Dubonnet, she chose iced tea. “The choice of where to stay was his,” she said.

“I know. And it’s why I came here, to look around for myself and to offer you some assistance.”

“You think he needs it?”

Moyer took a sip of the Dubonnet and used the government-employee-speak of someone more senior in rank than the person being addressed. “I hate to think what the result would be if something happened.”

In other words-what her career and life would look like if she had been offered CIA help in protecting Ryder and turned it down, and then, as Moyer said, something happened.

Wynn looked to the glass of iced tea on the cocktail table next to her, then picked it up and held it without drinking. “How many of your people should I expect?”

“One.”

“One?”

“Sometimes in one man you get ten.” Moyer smiled. “When are your people scheduled to secure the congressman’s room?”

“Tomorrow morning at seven.”