Allan Folsom - The Hadrian Memorandum

“Yes, and maybe White is, too. We’ve been through that.”

“Nicholas-” Something caught her eye and she looked off. A well-dressed elderly couple sitting nearby was watching them intently. She smiled politely, then gently turned her back to them and looked to Marten.

“It all has to do with the photographs,” she said quietly and almost offhandedly, as if she were simply discussing the weather or where they might go for dinner. “If Erlanger knew about them, I don’t know. But clearly Franck did. He brought Kovalenko along because he had to, but he would have killed him afterward, the same as he planned to do with us.”

“You’re saying the Agency wants to make sure Ryder doesn’t get them.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I don’t think they would particularly delight in the idea of someone-one of their own former operatives, or an expat American landscape architect, or even an esteemed U.S. congressman-having graphic proof that a private security contractor conspired to provoke a revolution in a third world country, especially one that resulted in the deaths of thousands of its citizens, to benefit an American oil company. Franck’s job was to kill us after he got the photographs. What makes you think that order isn’t still in place?

“The Agency has long arms, Nicholas, and very good hearing.” She nodded across the street toward number 17. “What if they’re already in there waiting? Or will be told where we are once we go inside? Who knows who this Raisa Amaro is, anyway?”

Just then the elderly couple walked slowly past, the gentleman walking with a cane and tipping his hat as he passed, his wife holding his arm.

Marten waited for them to move out of hearing, then abruptly turned to Anne. “Joe Ryder’s expecting to contact us through whatever means Ms. Amaro has set up for us. We try to reach him now-if we can reach him-and tell him our fears, he’ll want to change his plans. If he does, the people with him will want to know why, and he’ll have to tell them something, which can only make things worse when he tries to find a way to connect with us. We have to take the chance that your Lisbon chief of station, Sy Wirth, and White and his friends don’t yet know we’re here or, if they do, where we are.”

Anne looked off. She didn’t like it at all.

In the next instant a distinctive white-and-blue car with a thin red stripe running the length of it drove slowly past. A single word was painted on it-POLICIA. Seconds later two motorcycle units followed, their helmeted, uniformed riders carefully surveying the park as they went by. A moment of stillness followed, and then two more motorcycle units came by, this time on the far side of the park.

“May I suggest another storm front?” Marten asked quietly. “The very real possibility that Franck’s body has been found and that the authorities are keeping it quiet until the Portuguese police and maybe their counterparts in Spain, France, and Italy have been alerted and given the order to locate and take into custody the two persons the Hauptkommissar was investigating for the murder of Theo Haas. The same two persons the police know he followed to a beach house in Praia da Rocha that was owned by a certain Jacob Cádiz.”

Anne smiled thinly. “You’re saying we should take a great leap of faith and introduce ourselves to this Raisa Amaro as quickly as possible.”

“Sooner, darling. Sooner.”

7:34 P.M.

7:45 P.M.

“There are just you three, no more?”

“Yes.”

“A car and driver will be outside whenever you have need. Supplementary transportation is available with a ten-minute-or-less response time.”

“Good.”

“I know you are armed. Will you need additional armaments?”

“Unlikely, but it would depend on the situation.”

Conor White and Carlos Branco stood on the balcony of a modest fourth-floor apartment on Rua do São Filipe Néri. In the distance, long shadows cast by the setting sun accentuated the wide Tagus River and the boat traffic on it. Illuminated, too, in bright yellow light, was the towering Golden Gate-like 25th of April Bridge carrying vehicles to and from areas to the south, the Algarve among them.

Inside, through the sliding glass door, they could see Patrice and Irish Jack in the living room. They were already comfortable in jeans and tight black T-shirts, drinking coffee and playing cards. Over the rooftops on the building’s far side rose the Four Seasons Ritz, where Congressman Ryder would make his base sometime the next morning. It was a four-minute walk at most, thirty seconds by car.

White studied Branco carefully, as if trying to take his full measure. How much experience he had, his thought process, the way he moved. If he could fully trust him. Clearly what Sy Wirth had told him-that Loyal Truex, not himself, had set this up-seemed to be true. From all appearances he was a skilled professional. It was one of the very few things Wirth hadn’t screwed up. The speed of it meant that Truex had been in direct contact with Washington and that Branco’s hire would have been done by Lisbon’s CIA station chief. It was a roundabout, but in intelligence terms, correct way of keeping White out of any direct contact with Washington. That way they all were protected, which had been the idea from the beginning.

“What do you see?” Branco asked calmly.

“An accomplished resource whose name is not on the Agency payroll or listed anywhere on its books or records. A freelancer for hire who is paid out of the chief of station’s private account and is used to working that way.”

“Good.” Branco smiled.

“How much do you know about what’s going on?”

“Little to nothing. I’m a simple painter who has been assigned to Congressman Ryder’s RSO security detail. My job is to help set up his quarters at the hotel before he arrives and then be with him for the rest of his stay.”

“Painter? As in paint him as a target.”

Branco smiled. “Make sure all of his communication lines are bugged and that he is under real-time surveillance wherever he goes.”

“You are aware there are two others involved.”

“A Nicholas Marten and a Ms. Anne Tidrow. At some point they will attempt to meet with the congressman. When that happens, I am to pull back and take the RSO detail with me. Then you and your cardplaying friends will move in and do whatever needs to be done.”

Again Conor White studied him. “You know Lisbon well.”

“You are asking if I know how and where to work our threesome into an isolated situation but so they won’t realize it. And in a way where there can be no interference from the police or problems with accidental witnesses.”

White nodded.

“In a city like this there are all kinds of unexpected trapdoors. One only needs to know when they will be needed, and after that how to put them in play.”

“You can do that.”

“I am, as you said, an accomplished resource. Preparation is everything. It’s a discipline in which I am quite skilled.”

White crossed the balcony to look out at the river. For a long moment he stared at it, his mind elsewhere. Finally he turned back to Branco. “Do you know what Marten and Anne Tidrow look like?”

“I was provided with Marten’s British passport photo and the Tidrow woman’s corporate photograph. By now, either through the passage of time or on purpose or both, they will have changed their appearance. We will have to take that into consideration.”

“They will be coming over that”-he nodded toward the 25th of April Bridge-“from the Algarve. Maybe they’re already here, maybe not. When they are here, now or later, can you find them?”

“Undoubtedly the congressman will know how to reach them and will do so at some point after he arrives. His room will be bugged, his cell phones monitored the minute he lands. When he makes contact, we can move.”