Allan Folsom - The Hadrian Memorandum

“I knew when I hacked in and found the memorandum that at some point they would learn about it. Not who did it, or from where, but that the site had been accessed and on what day and at what time. They know that on that day and at that time I was at the Hotel Lisboa Chiado, where the rooms have Internet access. They may not know I made a copy but will assume I’d tell you and Ryder what I found.

“The pictures were bad enough because they implicate Striker in the war. The memorandum implicates, even criminalizes, the CIA. And not just the Agency but the deputy director personally. Conor White has enough to lose as it is. Now he has this. If he is Agency, or even if he’s not, he’s got to protect it. He can’t go down as the soldier who was supposed to guard something as massive as the Bioko field but lost it and at the same time disgraced the CIA.

“If he was fired up before, it’s double that now. He’ll come after us with everything he has, and there are few better than he is. He knows what he’s doing and how to do it, and he has his people with him. There may well be others, too, like those doing surveillance outside Raisa’s building. High or low, Conor pays people well. But bottom line, he’s the one running things. And if he is CIA, they’re letting him do whatever he wants because it benefits them most of all. What he wants is us dead and every piece of evidence we have recovered and destroyed. He can, and probably will, be very, very violent and won’t shy away from any means necessary to achieve his ends. That’s his training and the reason for all those medals. If he learns where we are he’ll kill everyone in this hospital if has to just to get to us. I-”

Suddenly there was a noise at the door. Immediately Marten’s hand went to the Glock in his waistband. Then the door opened and a man in a tan business suit and carrying a briefcase entered.

“Please don’t, Mr. Marten.” He turned the briefcase toward him. “It’s not necessary. I’m Special Agent Birns, Congressman Ryder’s RSO detail, half of it anyway.” He glanced at Anne and then around the room, then stepped back. “It’s alright, Congressman.”

A half second later Joe Ryder walked into the room; his look-alike, Tim Grant, followed him.

11:00 A.M.

AVENIDA DAS FORÇAS ARMADAS. SAME TIME.

Jeremy Moyer had spent the moments since he’d given Carlos Branco the green light to back up Conor White at the hospital taking a roundabout return drive to the embassy, trying to think of the best way to respond to the disaster that was only moments from making world headlines. At the same time, he had to find a reasonable excuse for pulling the remaining RSO detail out of the Ritz so that their ongoing presence wouldn’t raise questions later, especially in the follow-up investigation by the FBI or the State Department of Congressman Ryder’s killing. He mulled over a number of possibilities, then settled on the simplest: call Debra Wynn, chief of RSO/Lisbon, and tell her that a member of Congressman Ryder’s personal RSO detail-Special Agent Birns, he distinctly remembered the name from State Department paperwork alerting him to Ryder’s visit-had phoned him a short time ago to say the congressman had abruptly changed his plans and was on his way to the airport, preparing to leave Lisbon immediately. That had been the entire message. Whether Ryder had informed the ambassador or not, he didn’t know. Nor did he know why Birns had called him instead of her. At any rate, would she please pull her people out of the Ritz and reassign them.

Which was precisely what he did, calling her as he approached the embassy, explaining it all and closing with “If there was a sudden security threat, he didn’t mention it. My office has received nothing to raise the alert level any higher than it already was for his visit. Maybe it’s political. Maybe it has to do with Ryder’s commission. Maybe he’s going back to Iraq. I don’t know. It’s one of those things. Maybe one day we’ll find out.”

With that he clicked off, took a deep breath, and tried not to think of what was about to happen.

HOSPITAL DA UNIVERSIDADE. 11:08 A.M.

Special agents Grant and Birns stood guard in the hallway outside the examination room while Joe Ryder, Marten, and Anne went over Father Willy Dorhn’s Bioko photographs one by one. Ryder had already been told about the CIA briefing video and seen the 35 mm negatives of the memorandum. Since the document pages were too small to read without magnification, he could only listen to Anne’s detailed explanation of what was on them and accept her assurance that once full-sized prints were made everything would quite legible. In his mind there was no doubt of the veracity of what she was saying. Her tone of voice, her facial expression, the way she held herself, the involuntary clenching and unclenching of her hands told him, as much as the document itself, the personal hurt she was going through in revealing it. Not to mention the legal jeopardy she was putting herself in; she had, after all, stolen a top secret government document, and she sat on the board of directors of what very likely would become a federally indicted company, with its leaders quite possibly brought before an international court charged with crimes against humanity.

The photographs were self-explanatory, as was Marten’s description of other photos on the camera’s memory card that had been lost to the Russian agent Kovalenko. Those showing Conor White with the Chilean war criminal Mariano had been of particular interest, especially when tied to the CIA briefing video that he knew could be subpoenaed. That Kovalenko had killed the German policeman, Franck, and taken the memory card posed another concern because it raised the specter of Russian political interference in Equatorial Guinea, even high-stakes blackmail if Moscow threatened to make the photographs public.

Marten had still not told anyone but President Harris that the real memory card was in his possession and that the one he’d given to Kovalenko was harmless. They were far from being out of the woods yet, and he wasn’t about to give up the last piece of evidence when it was neither safe nor necessary. To that end he would keep custody of it until they were out of the country and the other evidence was secure and protected. Even then there was only one person he would give it to, the president himself.

11:10 A.M.

There was a knock on the door, it opened, and Birns stepped into the room. Mário Gama was with him.

“There is a man wearing the white jacket of Raisa Amaro’s laundry in the reception room,” Mário said. “He told the receptionist he was to ask for Ms. Tidrow or Mr. Marten and tell them he has a truck waiting. She referred him to me.”

“He asked for us by name?” Marten said flatly.

“Yes, sir.”

“He was to have waited until we came out. I’m not sure he even knew our names.”

“Maybe he did know and simply forgot his instructions. He came in to make sure nothing went wrong.”

“Maybe.” Marten looked at his watch. “He’s early. He was to have been here at eleven fifteen.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Ryder said. “Put the photographs back together. Let’s get out of here.”

Anne felt her danger antenna come up. She looked at Marten.

He was already moving, nodding to Agent Grant in the hallway and closing the door. Now he looked to Gama. “Do you know the laundry’s telephone number?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Would you please call and ask for Raisa. When you get her, hand the phone to me.”

Mário’s eyes darted cautiously around the room. Then he lifted a BlackBerry from his pocket and punched in a number. They could hear it ring through; then someone picked up and a male voice answered in Portuguese.