The instant was horrific as both she and he realized what was happening. People had seen him tear through them in a wild rush. They thought he was the one the police were chasing and were pointing him out.
Anne moved, and fast. In a heartbeat she was at Marten’s side, taking his arm. “Come on, darling,” she said loud enough to be heard by people around her, “we’re late.” Abruptly she pulled open the door to a waiting taxi.
“Hotel Mozart Superior, right away, please,” she said to the driver, then shoved Marten into the cab and got in beside him.
“Of course,” the driver said in accented English, then moved the taxi off quickly, closely following another cab through the melee. In seconds they were gone and traveling back down Unter den Linden in the direction of Marten’s hotel.
5:24 P.M.
“Where the hell did you come from?” Marten stared at her, astounded by her presence, by everything that had just happened, and by what was happening now. “How did you know I was in Berlin, or where I was in the city, or where I’m staying?”
“I know everything, darling. You’re keeping a lover. I want to meet her,” Anne scolded Marten sharply and loudly enough to be heard by the driver. “In Paris you told me you were taking a British Airways flight to London. But that was after you’d already asked an Air France crew the directions to another gate. You do things like that, you’d better be careful no one sees you. Who, or what, should I expect to meet? Let me guess, a long-legged blonde, about twenty-four, with big tits.”
Suddenly she looked up and saw the driver watching them in the mirror. “Would you please turn on the radio? We’d like to have some music.”
“American?”
“Anything, thank you.”
Immediately the driver turned on the vehicle’s radio and tuned it to a satellite channel and U.S. country music boomed out.
Marten glared at her. “I asked you how you knew where I was and where I’m staying.”
“You may remember that I sit on the board of directors of a rather large oil company. We have friends everywhere.”
Marten glanced at the driver, then looked back to Anne and lowered his voice, uncertain the music would mask their conversation. “You followed me from Malabo to Paris to Berlin and now to here. Why?”
Anne looked to the driver and gave him a big smile. “I like it. Turn it up!”
He grinned back and did as she asked; the music blared.
Immediately Anne turned to Marten. “I want the photographs. And don’t say ‘what photographs?’ ”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes you do. And you know where they are. The old man told you.”
Marten smiled evenly. “Too bad your hearing wasn’t as good as your eyesight. The subject of photographs never came up.”
Just then Garth Brooks’s “Friends in Low Places” boomed from the taxi’s radio, and Anne leaned in close. “I want the pictures, Mr. Marten. I’ll pay you what you want for them.”
“Whatever these pictures are, they obviously mean a lot to you. Why?”
“Don’t play with me,” she snapped. “You know what the pictures are of and who is in them. I want them back because the safety and well-being of our people in Equatorial Guinea depends on it.”
“Which people are ‘our people,’ Ms. Tidrow? The fellow chasing me through Charles de Gaulle Airport? The Striker Oil board of directors? SimCo mercenaries? Certainly not your friend President Tiombe or his army that is slaughtering people by the hundreds even as you and I cruise around Berlin.”
“Striker Oil employees, Mr. Marten. People who work for us have always been treated as family. We guarantee their security anywhere they are working.” She softened a little. “Please, Mr. Marten. The photographs are very important to me personally. I want them back.”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then why did you tell me you were going to London and you came here instead? A few hours later you met with the old man in the park. That meeting was about the photographs. Who he is, or rather was, I don’t know. Whoever he was, he told you where to find them. I don’t know who you work for or why. But whatever they’re paying you I’ll pay you a lot more.”
“Let me tell you something about the ‘old man,’ Ms. Tidrow,” Marten said quietly. It was clear that neither she nor Conor White had yet made the connection between Father Willy and Theo Haas. It meant they were guessing that he knew about the photographs and where they were. “He was a rather famous German author who had written, among many things, several very good books on the design of city parks. You verified that I was a landscape architect, so it shouldn’t surprise you that I changed my plans and came to Berlin when he agreed to see me at the last minute. I met him in the park so that he could discuss his work.”
“I don’t believe you, Mr. Marten.” What little softness there’d been was suddenly gone.
“That’s unfortunate, but you don’t have much choice.”
Just then the taxi pulled sharply to the curb and stopped. Immediately Anne turned to the driver. “What is it?”
The driver turned down the music, looked in the mirror, and smiled. “Where you asked to be taken, madame. The Hotel Mozart Superior.”
In that next breath, Marten leaned forward and handed him a hundred-euro bill. “Please take the lady back to her hotel, or wherever she’s staying.”
Quickly he opened the door and looked to Anne. “Thanks for caring, darling. I’ll get rid of her myself. Long legs, big tits, and all.”
Then he was out of the cab and entering the Hotel Mozart Superior. A second later the taxi pulled away.
5:38 P.M.
26
It took Marten four minutes to get to his room and start putting his things together. Anne Tidrow’s arrival had been a surprise, but nothing like the sudden murder of Theo Haas. Her personal motivations aside, her quick wit, spiriting him out of there when the crowd was pointing him out to the police thinking he was the man they were looking for, had been deeply appreciated. The trouble was, Haas had been a national icon and the hunt for his killer and anyone connected to him would be massive. He had to get out of Berlin and Germany as quickly as possible, before the police investigation began in earnest and witnesses in both the park and at the Brandenburg Gate began describing him in detail. There was something else, too. It wouldn’t be long before the police would discover that Theo Haas and Father Willy were brothers and immediately wonder if the two murders were connected. If that were made public, Anne Tidrow, Conor White, and the E.G. army’s hawk-faced officer would no longer be guessing why he had come to Berlin. They would know for certain.
What that meant, the police notwithstanding, was that very soon it would be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, for him to leave Germany, let alone Berlin, without one of them close on his tail. And that he couldn’t permit under any circumstance because now he did know, or at least thought he knew, where the pictures were.
Sitting on the park bench in the Platz der Republik, watching him the way Father Willy had in the rain forest, trying to judge whether or not to trust him, Theo Haas had, in a very roundabout way and in the manner of his brother, pointed him in the direction of the photographs: “Livros usados, Avenida Tomás Cabreira,” he’d said with a smile. “The town of Praia da Rocha in the Algarve region of Portugal. A man named Jacob Cádiz. He collects things.” Seconds later, before Marten had the chance to question him further, the firecrackers had gone off. A second beat after that the curly-haired man struck and Haas was dead.
5:47 P.M.
Marten finished packing his suitcase and zipped it closed. There would be no official checkout, no formal notice of leaving, nothing, just go and let the hotel track him down later. One final glance around to make sure he’d left nothing behind, then he went to the door, opened it, and froze.
“I believe this is yours, Mr. Marten.” Anne Tidrow stood alone in the hallway. Immediately she pressed the hundr
ed-euro bill he’d given to their taxi driver into his hand. “I can afford my own cab fare. May I come in?”
“I—” Marten hesitated.
“Thank you,” she said and stepped into the room, closing the door behind them.
He stared at her. “Now what?”
“I have another taxi waiting. It’s at the side door. I suggest we use it, and sooner rather than later.”
“We?”
“After you left the cab, the driver turned his radio from country music to the news. It seems your murdered friend was not just an author but the famed Nobel laureate Theo Haas. A Nobel laureate who was last seen alive talking to someone in Platz der Republik who, according to witnesses, looked a lot like you. I’m sure that once our driver friend realizes it, he will be more than happy to describe that person to the police, then tell them who was with him and where he took them. Would you like me to explain it further?”
“No.” Marten said. The police had moved more quickly and efficiently than he’d thought they would. It wouldn’t be long before they’d know who he was and would be right here in this room collecting evidence. Like it or not, he and Anne Tidrow were suddenly joined at the hip. Worse, she had her teeth into him and wasn’t about to let go, no matter the consequences. It gave him little choice but to go along with her.
“Just where is this other taxi taking us?” he said.
“My hotel.”
“How do you know that afterward this driver won’t inform the police?”
“Because I’m paying him five hundred euros not to.”
5:50 P.M.
27
HOTEL ADLON KEMPINSKI, ROOM 647. 6:15 P.M.
Marten stood near the window staring out. Not a hundred yards away, backlit by the late-afternoon sun, was the Brandenburg Gate with a number of police vehicles still clearly in sight. That they’d come back to the same area they had left barely an hour earlier was something he hadn’t realized when they arrived because they’d come in through the luxury hotel’s rear entrance on Behrenstrasse and then taken a back stairwell to avoid using the elevators.
He turned to look at Anne. She had her suitcase open on the bed and was hurriedly packing it. “Some choice of hotels. I count four police cars and three police motorcycles, and that’s just those I can see.”
She stopped and looked at him. “How did I know you were going to come this way? I just wanted a place reasonably close to yours.”
“You should have stayed in Malabo. Better yet, Texas.”
She smiled. “Look at it this way, darling. By now the authorities will have detained anyone they wanted to question, meaning that before long most of them will leave the area.”
“Then what?”
“We go and get the photographs.”
Marten suddenly flared. “You never let up, do you? Somehow you’ve convinced yourself that I know where they are and what’s in them.”
As quickly her eyes narrowed and she pushed back. “Stop playing games with me, Nicholas. You were going out the door with your suitcase when I showed up at your hotel. If the pictures were anywhere nearby you would have simply gone to get them and then come back to your room with nobody the wiser. That means they aren’t in Berlin, maybe not even in Germany. But wherever they are, you were on your way to get them.”
“I had my suitcase because I was going home,” he said quietly.
“You were going home this morning, too, remember? You came to Berlin instead.”
“I came to Berlin to see Theo Haas. He’s dead. What else was I supposed to do? Believe it or not, I have a job waiting. My employers as well as my clients can be exceptionally demanding.”
“Not as demanding as the police. They’ll want to know why you met with Haas, and they won’t buy your fairy tale about discussing park design. Once you tell them the real reason, and you will, they’ll want to know what the photographs were of, and you’ll have to tell them that too. Then we’ll have the beginning of a major international incident and because of it the pictures, wherever they are, will be recovered. The police will see to it.
“You’re not doing this on your own, darling. Not here, and you weren’t in Bioko, either. If those photographs become public, whoever hired you won’t like it, and neither will I. So cut the bullshit about not knowing. We don’t have time for it. There may be a way out of this yet, but you can’t do it without me, and you’re not getting me without the pictures.”
Marten had no idea what “a way out of this” meant. He knew that if he had to, he could get help by calling President Harris and telling him what was going on, but that was something he had to save as a last resort because if he did call him the president would do everything he could to get him out of there. That meant pulling strings, which was something that in itself could set off an international incident no matter how discreetly it was done, simply because of who Theo Haas was. Both the Berlin police and the German public would be outraged to learn that the chief suspect in his murder had been suddenly let go under pressure from the American government.
And one way or another they would learn, if by no other means than the long, invasive tail of the Internet. If that happened, pundits, bloggers, and almost anyone else would have a field day tracing the diplomatic maneuver to its “suspected” source. Even if it couldn’t be proven the damage would have been done and what Anne Tidrow said about “whoever hired you won’t like it” would be a helluva lot more than accurate because it would appear to the world that the president of the United States was trying to cover up a murder. Moreover, it could lead to the ultimate exposure of the photographs, which, when made public, would make it look as if the motive behind it had been to protect both Striker Oil and Hadrian. Clearly that was a scenario Marten couldn’t let play out. So once again, and for now at least, he had little choice but to let Anne Tidrow run the show.
He plunked down on the edge of the bed. “What are we supposed to do while we wait for the police to go their merry way?”
“Turn on the television. Maybe you can learn what they’re doing. If they’re checking passengers leaving from airport, bus, and train terminals. If they’re searching cars leaving the city.”
“I don’t speak German.”
“You’ll get the idea. It’s television, it’s not that hard.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Take a shower.”
“A shower?” Marten was incredulous.
“Most of last night was spent on an airplane. Today was spent chasing after you. I have the feeling tonight is going to be pretty damn long as well. So if you don’t mind, I’d like to get cleaned up before it begins.” Abruptly she went into the bathroom and closed the door.
“How do you know I won’t just leave?” he called through it.
“Because I’d call the police if you did.”
“They’d get you, too.” There was no reply.
He raised his voice. “I said they’d get you, too.” Still no reply.
Then he heard the shower running.
6:25 P.M.
6:37 P.M.
Marten was sitting in a chair staring at the television when the bathroom door opened and Anne came back into the room, her dark hair twisted up in a towel, a thick white terrycloth robe pulled around her, her eyes on the TV screen.
“Did you learn anything?” she said.
Marten said nothing, just continued to watch the screen. She took a step closer. Whatever channel he was tuned to was broadcasting live remotes, cutting between stand-up reporters on the green of the Platz der Republik, the Brandenburg Gate, and Polizeipräsidium Berlin, police headquarters, on Platz der Luftbrücke. An on-camera correspondent outside of the Polizeipräsidium suddenly put a hand to his earphone, as if listening to a special instruction from the studio, then quickly gave an introduction to whatever was next. The video feed abruptly cut to a media room somewhere inside the building where a tall, steely, black-eyed man with a shaved head, wearing a black leather jacket, white shirt, and a tie, appr
oached a bank of microphones.
“Ever hear of a Berlin detective called Hauptkommissar Emil Franck?” Marten asked without looking at her.
“No.”
“Well, that’s him. A few minutes ago I saw him on a video that was recorded at the Platz der Republik. He seems to be their top homicide cop and is heading the investigation.”
“What have they said so far?”
“That I’m the guy they’re looking for.”
“What?” Anne was flabbergasted.
“At least as far as I can tell.”
“How can they know for sure? All they had was a description.”
“Somebody took my picture with a cell phone.”
“Christ!”
“Amen.”
“Do they have your name?”
“If they do, they haven’t said.”
Hauptkommissar Franck reached the microphones and looked directly into the camera. He spoke first in German and then in English and in a voice that was icy and without emotion.
“This is the man wanted for questioning in the tragic and shocking daylight murder of Theo Haas. We are asking the public’s help in finding him.”
A blurry image of Marten in the melee near the Brandenburg Gate popped on the screen. Franck’s voice was heard giving a telephone number and e-mail address.
“Recognize me?” Marten’s concentration was on the TV.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
Immediately the same phone number and e-mail address appeared on the screen. After a long moment the picture faded to black. Several seconds later a photograph of Theo Haas appeared. Superimposed over it were the words VERBRECHEN DES JAHRHUNDERTS.
“Crime of the century,” she translated. “Crime of the fucking century.”
Marten turned to look at her. “For some reason I don’t think the rather generous bribe you gave the taxi driver who brought us here is going to be enough to keep him from suddenly going to the police.”
“Neither do I.”
28
Marten stood up quickly. “It’s only a matter of time before they show up here. If I leave now, go out the back entrance the way we came in, you can deny it all. Tell them you met me on the plane from Bioko, we did a little flirting, and you followed me to Berlin for the fun of it. You had no idea I was going to meet with Theo Haas, let alone be around when he was killed. Moreover, you can describe the real killer to them. You know what he looked like as well as I do. Others had to have seen him, too, people the police may have already questioned and you can bring that up, it’ll give you credibility. You’re a wealthy American who sits on the board of a large Texas oil company. They’re not going to do much of anything to you, especially once you convince them you just got caught up in an unfortunate coincidence and have no idea where I’ve gone. And it’ll be the truth because you won’t.”