Allan Folsom - The Hadrian Memorandum

4:22 P.M.

White pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, ran it over his neck, and then wiped his forehead. It was hot and humid as it always was, ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit when he’d left the air-conditioning of his motor home office/sleeping quarters ten minutes earlier.

The neighborhood here was a hodgepodge of old colonial buildings in varying stages of disrepair. Most had crumbling archways and tattered or broken window shutters and front doors that looked as if they had been repaired by crate makers. All were topped by slanted, grooved metal roofs, the majority of which were in danger of rusting through. The buildings themselves, made of white concrete and two or three stories high, were, he imagined, probably built in the 1930s or ’40s. No doubt once elegant and well kept, in all probability they’d remained that way until 1968, when Equatorial Guinea gained independence after one hundred and ninety years of Spanish rule and the series of brutal dictatorships began, slipping the country into a morass of untold riches for the few and deep poverty for the rest. The buildings now were inhabited by the latter and had not only fallen into sad disrepair but along the way had been painted a combination of colors that made no sense at all. One was faded yellow with an equally faded pink balcony, another a dreary white with one archway of light blue and another of muddy orange; still another was bright pink but had shutters that were salmon on one side and brilliant green on the other.

Conor White had been around the world more times than he could remember, and nothing he had seen quite matched the cheerless atmosphere of rust and decay and near all-invasive poverty that was Malabo, or at least the part of it where he stood now.

4:30 P.M.

Again his eyes went to the end of the block.

Still nothing.

They were to have arrived at four twenty-five. Where were they? What was the delay? He could radio, he knew, easily enough. Just reach into his jacket and click the piece on. Tell SimCo dispatch what he wanted, and in less than thirty seconds he would have location coordinates and a corrected, near exact time of arrival. But he didn’t. There was no point in revealing his impatience, even to his dispatcher.

4:33 P.M.

Ten feet away a rooster wandered along the sidewalk, clucking around a dead palm tree and then strutting boldly across the cracked asphalt street under a collection of weathered low-hanging wires that dangled hazardously between metal telephone poles.

4:34 P.M.

Again White looked down the street. An old man turned the corner on a bicycle and came toward him. Behind him the street was empty. Patience be damned. He started to reach for his radio. Then-

There they were, rounding the corner and coming toward him: a muddied Army of Equatorial Guinea machine-gun-mounted Humvee followed in close order by two mud-crusted Toyota Land Cruisers and then a second army Humvee, the one that would have picked them up as a tail car when they entered the city.

White stepped back under the arch and out of sight as they passed. Seconds later the caravan pulled beneath the overhang of a crumbling two-story building across the street. Armed soldiers jumped from the army vehicles and pulled open the doors of the Land Cruisers. In a heartbeat the occupants of both cars were brought out and led into the building. They were eight in all. Four were young Spanish medical students he knew about. He had their names and passport numbers and home addresses in Madrid. Two others were uniformed native guides. The seventh was a young female doctor, from Madrid, whose personal information he had as well. The last was the individual he wanted most to see and was the reason he had come there and waited as he had. At this point he had no information about him at all. What he knew was what he saw. A ruggedly handsome male Caucasian in his midthirties, about six feet tall, slim and dark-haired. He was the man the soldiers had seen with Father Willy Dorhn, the same man who had run from them in the rain forest. He was the real person of interest here. Someone who might well know about the photographs the priest had taken and the missing camera memory card that went with them.

White had wanted to see him in person, get a sense of him before the army interrogators took over. If the army didn’t get the information he wanted, he would have to find a way to do it himself. Experience had taught him that if possible it was best to get a sense of your quarry before he had any idea that you even existed, especially when you had no information about him. It gave you a step up, a chance to see how he carried himself, what his attitude was, what he might be like physically and mentally if you had to go up against him. It wasn’t much, but it was more than the other man had.

4:47 P.M.

The room was unbearably hot.

The soldier’s uniform had no name tag, just gold oak leaf clusters on his epaulets. The best Marten could construe was that he was a major in the army of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea. He was big and powerfully built, well over six feet and easily two hundred and fifty pounds. A fearsome tribal scar covered most of the left half of his face, while a similar scar was on his right forearm. Taken together they gave him more the appearance of a bush warrior than a military officer. Yet none of it compared with his eyes. Dark brown and bloodshot, they were like those of the soldier who had come after him in the rain forest. Homicidal and wholly merciless, they were the gateway to the possessor’s soul and something Marten would fear for the rest of his life.

“Speak into the microphone,” the major commanded in a deep, heavily accented voice, sweat glistening on his forehead, the microphone of an old-style cassette tape recorder held inches from Marten’s face. “State your name, profession, and place of residence. Then describe what took place yesterday when you were in Bioko South.”

Marten was seated on a straight-backed chair in the center of a dimly lit room. Sweat soaked his hair, running down his neck and his face and into his shirt. To his left two solidly built uniformed officers stood erect and in silence. Beyond them, two more uniformed men guarded the door. The men at the door were clearly not officers but everyday soldiers, young and alert and eager. Their eyes locked on Marten, they seemed almost hungry, as if they were hoping he would do something so they could act on it.

All of them were dressed in the same sweat-stained jungle-green camouflage uniforms, their trouser legs bloused over heavy, laced-up combat boots. Each wore a dark red beret with some kind of bright yellow and black insignia stitched on the front. The major and the two officers carried sidearms, while the men at the door fingered light machine guns.

The room itself was large, its floor covered with cracked linoleum. An aging wooden table was just inside the door and had several old and rusted chrome kitchen stools standing alongside it. The walls were water-stained plaster, long ago painted a sickly green. What little illumination there was came from three bare lightbulbs that hung by frayed electric cords from the ceiling, and from the spill of afternoon daylight that crept in through broken shutters in the room’s only window. A lone ceiling fan turned slowly above Marten’s head, barely moving the stifling air.

Beyond all that, the thing that caught Marten’s eye was a young male goat tied to a leg of the wooden table happily chewing on a stack of old newspapers. Whether it was a pet or regiment mascot or some kind of indigenous good-luck charm or was there for some other reason entirely, there was no way to know, but his presence seemed strange, even in a frightful place like this.

“Sir, speak into the microphone,” the major commanded again. This time his voice resonated with impatience. “State your name, your profession, and place of residence. Then describe what took place yesterday when you were in Bioko South.”