Allan Folsom - The Hadrian Memorandum

10:35 P.M.

A visit to a café further down the street and then a bar and shortly afterward a souvenir shop had had the same result. No Anne, nor anyone looking like her, had either come or gone within the past hour.

He moved on, the wet streets reflecting the vivid colors of lighted store signs and the headlights of passing traffic. By now he was walking along Rua Garrett and nearly out of the Chiado district. Ahead, and down a steep cobblestoned street-he recalled from earlier-and he would be in the even more densely populated Baixa quarter. He was about to turn the corner and start down when two things came to mind at almost the same moment.

The first was something Anne had asked Raisa as she had shown them around the apartment.

“One other thing. A computer or laptop with an Internet connection. At some point I will need to do a little work.”

Raisa’s reply had been that as yet the building had no Internet connection. It was a reality Anne had accepted with little more than a nod.

The second was something that had happened earlier as they’d climbed from the Baixa quarter and turned onto Rua Garrett, where he was now-when Anne had suddenly ducked into a small, elegant five-star hotel to use the loo. At the time it had seemed completely reasonable, but putting the two pieces together now he wondered if she hadn’t been doing something more than just taking a pee. Maybe she’d been deliberately checking out the hotel to see if it had Internet service, a service a five-star hotel might very well provide even if some of the surrounding neighborhoods did not. But why? She had an Internet connection on her BlackBerry.

Still…

Abruptly Marten turned back, retracing his steps on Rua Garrett. The hotel had been small, stylish, and on the left. Where was it? What had it been called? He walked on. Suddenly the rain came down in earnest. He huddled close under the umbrella and moved on. Seconds later he stopped. Not fifty paces ahead he saw it. hotel lisboa chiado His blood came up in a rush, and he started toward it.

10:46 P.M.

HOTEL LISBOA CHIADO. 10:48 P.M.

The sound of a piano greeted Marten as he entered the small foyer. It seemed to be coming from a bar partway down an elegant wood-paneled hallway that led to the main desk area in the rear. On the left and in between was an elevator. A stairwell was just past it. Not the best architectural layout for a hotel, but probably done to work within the structural confines of a building that looked to be eighty years old at least and might once have been a private residence.

Marten closed the umbrella and walked down the hallway to glance into the bar. A young black man in a white suit sat at a piano effortlessly playing a medley of show tunes for the dozen or so patrons congregated there. As in the other places he’d visited, Anne was not among them.

He turned back, looked in the direction of the main desk, and headed for it. As he did, the elevator in front of him opened and three people stepped out. Their backs to him, they walked in the same direction he was going, toward the main desk. Two were clearly hotel employees, both in dark suits, one older than the other, the concierge, maybe. The third was a slim, fortyish, dark-haired man dressed in jeans and a Hawaiian shirt.

“I understand she checked in, but where is she now?” the Hawaiian shirt asked emphatically.

“I don’t know, sir. I’m sorry.” The older man was genuinely apologetic. “Maybe she went out for something she needed. She had no luggage. She said it had been lost at the airport and was to be delivered here. So far it hasn’t been.”

“But she did go to the room.”

“Yes, sir. The night clerk showed her to it. You saw that for yourself.”

“All I saw was that someone had used a hand towel in the bathroom. It could have been anyone.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Tidrow. It’s all I can tell you.”

“She’s my sister, you know. She’s not well. She was supposed to call the moment she checked in.”

“I appreciate the situation, sir. We will alert you the moment she returns.”

At the word “Tidrow” Marten stopped where he was. They were already here, looking for her. How could they have known? Unless she’d been foolish enough to use a credit card and her accounts were being electronically monitored. But then credit cards, plus a little cash-certainly not enough for a room in a hotel like this, four hundred euros a night at least, probably more-would have been all she had. Moreover, she would have known that there was every chance her accounts were being watched and that if she used any of her cards they would know where they had been used and when, almost instantly. It meant she’d come there, done whatever she’d had to do, and then left before they could get there. But why? What was it that was worth the risk of exposing herself like this?

Use of the Internet?

Maybe he was wrong. Maybe she’d come there for some other reason entirely. He looked around. On a side table near the bar entrance was an arrangement of hotel brochures. Quickly he crossed to it, picked one up, and opened it. In the list of hotel amenities were the words High Speed Internet Access in All Rooms .

Again he saw the fire and fear and uncertainty in her eyes just before she’d left Raisa’s apartment building and disappeared into the night. Alright, maybe the Internet was what she’d been after. But what information had she hoped to get that wasn’t already available to her via her own BlackBerry?

He slipped the brochure back in its cradle and looked down the hallway. The man in the Hawaiian shirt had stepped away from the others and was on a cell phone.

Get out of here, now! Marten thought.

Head down, he started for the front door. As he did, it opened and two men in suit coats came in. One was strongly built and well over six feet; the other, tall and very slim. Marten barely glanced at them as he passed, but in that instant the breath went out of him. The big man was Conor White. The other was the French-Canadian jungle fighter, Patrice Sennac.

Breathless, umbrella in hand, Marten pushed through the door and out into the rain. A metallic gray BMW was parked directly in front of the hotel; a lone man sat at the wheel. Double-parked across the street was a dark blue Jaguar sedan. Its parking lights were on and he could just make out two figures in the front seat. Both were looking in his direction. Immediately he turned right and walked quickly off. Back down Rua Garrett, toward the Baixa district. Seconds later he heard the hotel’s door open behind him. A rush of feet followed. Beard, turned-up collar, pulled-down hat, or not, he’d been recognized.

He took off on the dead run.

10:57 P.M.

Marten turned off Rua Garrett and ran hard down steep, rain-slicked, white-cobblestoned steps that ran alongside whatever narrow side street he had taken.

“Marten!”

Someone shouted behind him. Conor White? Maybe.

“Marten!” it came again.

He looked back and saw two men crest the top of hill on foot. Just then the gray BMW came into view. It slid to a stop beside them. They jumped in and the car screeched off, coming after him.

He turned back and kept running, looking for a way out. Then he saw a darkened alley to his right and turned down it, moving, he thought, into the Baixa quarter. At the end he turned left and ran on. Seconds later he saw the dark blue Jaguar flash under street-lights as it cut in from a side street. He turned left again, ran up a hill, then cut right at the next street and started down it. For a moment there was silence. Then he heard a wild scream of tires behind him and saw the Jaguar slide around the corner, nearly hit a parked car, then regain control and race toward him. Where the BMW had gone he didn’t know.