Franck looked puzzled. “She’s currently on the board?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want to know more about Striker. Where their operations are outside of Iraq. If they have offices in Germany or elsewhere in the EU. Next, do we have a make on her companion?”
“Not yet, sir.”
“Yes, we do.” Gertrude Prosser’s voice suddenly crackled through his earpiece. “His name is Nicholas Marten. He’s a landscape architect from Manchester, England. Checked into the Mozart Superior just after one this afternoon.”
“Landscape architect?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Find out where he was before he came to Berlin—if he came directly from Manchester or from somewhere else—and if he has a criminal record. I want to know about the firm he works for. How established they are, what kind of clients they have. All of this is to be kept confidential and within my department only. No information, I repeat, no information is to reach the media. Total blackout.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hauptkommissar,” Handler suddenly called to him.
“Yes.” Franck clicked off and looked up.
Handler and the dogs were stopped at a construction Dumpster thirty feet ahead in a work area near the Reichstag. The Malinois were dancing in circles, confused.
“She stopped here,” Handler said. “Spent a few minutes, then moved on. I don’t know if the man was with her or not.”
“Which way?”
“Toward the river, I think.”
“You think?”
“There’s too much construction debris and a great deal of plaster and cement dust. They’ve lost the scent.”
Franck stared at him, clearly upset.
“I’m sorry, Haupkommissar.”
“It’s alright, Handler. It’s alright. We’ll take it from here. Thank you.”
9:12 P.M.
33
9:45 P.M.
Anne Tidrow and Nicholas Marten walked quickly along Friedrichstrasse. Heads down, they dodged in and out of leisurely strolling pedestrian traffic as best they could without calling attention to themselves. Four minutes earlier they’d disembarked from the Monbijou at the Weidendamm Bridge dock on the city side of the Spree, then crossed back over it, going in the same direction they had earlier. The entire route, boat ride included, had consumed nearly two hours, while taking them in what was little more than a large circle that brought them right back into the city and the hornet’s nest that was the police dragnet.
“This is crazy,” Marten breathed as two motorcycle officers cruised slowly past surveying the pedestrians. “How much further?”
“We’re almost—”
“You speak English?” A man with a closely trimmed beard suddenly locked step with them. He was maybe thirty and fashionably dressed in a beige suit and fitted black T-shirt.
They said nothing, just kept walking.
“English, yes? I’m trying to help you,” he insisted.
Anne glanced at him. “What do you want?”
He smiled and lowered his voice.” I got some good stuff. Pure coke, none of this street shit.”
“No, thank you.”
“What about him?” he nodded at Marten. Marten kept his head down and said nothing. “She speak for you?” he pressed.
Still Marten said nothing, just kept walking.
“I’m talking to you, man. Come on, this is good stuff. Not easy to find.”
“Please leave us alone.” Marten glanced at him sharply, then looked away.
Suddenly the man narrowed his forehead. “I’ve seen you someplace before, and not long ago.”
Abruptly Marten stopped, grabbed the man’s collar, and pulled him close. “I’m a cop. A detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. Want me to pull one of the local gendarmes over, let him check you out?”
“Let go of me, man. Let me go!” The man squealed and tried to pull away.
Marten fixed him with a stare, then shoved him backward. “Get the hell out of here. Now!”
The man stared a half second, then turned and walked quickly away in the opposite direction, disappearing in the sidewalk crowd.
Anne looked at him and grinned. “A cop?”
Immediately Marten took her by the arm. “Wherever we’re going, get us there as fast as you can.”
10:10 P.M.
The apartment was utilitarian at best. The top floor of an old three-story brick-building on an alley off Ziegelstrasse. There were two small, meagerly furnished rooms, plus a tiny kitchen and bath. The bedroom was in the back. It had a double bed, a worn overstuffed chair, and a chest of drawers. A small window opened onto an air shaft with an iron fire ladder that led to the roof. The other room, a kind of sitting room/dining room/library, was in the front, where two narrow floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the alley with a glimpse of Ziegelstrasse at the end of it.
The chipped, red-painted cupboard in the kitchen had been recently stocked with a variety of canned soups and meats along with two boxes of dry cereal, a jar of mustard, and one of strawberry jam. The refrigerator held a pound of ground coffee, a small wheel of cheese, a liter of milk, some fresh-sliced ham, several apples, two loaves of dark bread, a half-dozen bottles of mineral water, and eight bottles of Radeberger Pilsner beer. In all, enough to keep them fed, as Anne said, “for several days or more.”
“Several days?” Marten protested as they walked through the darkened front room to take refuge in the back bedroom.
“I’m doing my best to get us out of this mess. It’s not easy. It may take a little time.” Anne turned on a small bedside lamp. Its warm glow was welcome against the dark of the rest of the apartment, purposely kept that way to avoid drawing attention from the alley below. “You might even say thank you, for God’s sake.”
Marten’s reply was slow. “Thank you,” he said finally, then walked off down the hall to stand in the doorway to the front room and stare silently into it, alone with his thoughts.
“You’re welcome,” she said after him, then opened her purse and took out a designer T-shirt and started to undress. She took off her jacket and jeans, then her shirt and bra, folding them all neatly and setting them in a pile on top of the chest of drawers. She’d just pulled on the T-shirt when she felt a presence and turned to find him standing in the doorway looking at her.
“What the hell’s going on?” he said quietly. “Whose place is this? Who are you?”
“I’m tired. I want to sleep,” she said.
“Yeah, well I’m tired, too.”
“Please, not now.”
She was starting past him for the bathroom when he put an arm out and stopped her. “You’ve got ten seconds to answer my questions. You don’t, I’m walking out. I’ll take my chances with the police.” His eyes were fierce and unrelenting, his mind clearly made up.
She stared back at him. “What do you want me to tell you?”
“About the company. About you. All of it.”
“I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“Try the beginning.”
She watched him a beat longer, then relented. “Alright.” She went back to the bed and sat down cross-legged on it, still dressed only in the T-shirt and panties, the nipples of her breasts protruding smartly through the shirt’s soft cotton. If it was provocative, she didn’t seem to care.
“My father owned Striker Oil. He bought it when it was a small oil services company in West Texas in the 1970s. My mother died when I was thirteen. I was an only child. He raised me himself. Took me all over the world with him while he tried to build the business, which meant anywhere there was oil or oil companies who needed management or exploration services. We nearly went under more than once. Then it caught hold. He took Striker public and did very well. I went to college in Texas and then into business. I got married and divorced. Shortly afterward my father had a stroke and put me on Striker’s board of directors because he knew I would protect the company and because I knew more about it than anybo
dy but him. Then he had a second stroke, and I left my job to take care of him. I stayed with him for four years until he died.” Suddenly she stopped. “Boring, isn’t it? Why the hell don’t we just leave it at that?”
Marten leaned back against the doorjamb. “What happened to the company then?”
She watched him for a long moment. He wanted to know everything and wasn’t about to back down until he had it. If she was going to keep him with her, she had no choice but to continue.
“The people he brought in to run it, namely Sy Wirth and his hand-picked executives, got Wirth elected chairman and chief executive, bought back its shares, and took it private, getting rid of most of the board in the process. Afterward Wirth started developing friendships in Washington, which is how he hooked up with Hadrian to protect our oil field businesses around the world. Then Iraq happened, and he and Hadrian were right there. Almost from the start they were manipulating State Department contracts, hiring all kinds of subcontractors, double billing, using creative bookkeeping, all of it in a way that was almost impossible to track. I didn’t like it and said so. The only reason they kept me on the board was because of my father’s reputation with our employees and suppliers and other companies we did business with. I could yell to the horizon about what they were doing, but I knew it would do no good. They were arrogant and making hundreds of millions, so why should they change, even when they were under the spotlight of Joe Ryder’s congressional committee. Conor White was—”
She stopped again, and he could see the anger rise in her, as if she suddenly realized she was telling too much. “I’m really tired. I want to go to sleep.”
“Not yet.”
She glared at him. “You’re a fucking prick.”
“Maybe. And maybe I just want to know what the hell I’m dealing with. Conor White what?”
“Conor White,” she said deliberately, “was hired to create SimCo as a replacement for Hadrian in Equatorial Guinea so that whatever happened with Ryder’s inquiry into what was going on in Iraq would in no way trigger an interest there.”
“And you knew about it.”
“I knew about it, but I had no idea he was involved in arming the rebels. The man you saw me with on the plane was an in de pen dent auditor I hired to go over our books in Malabo to make certain there was absolutely no connection between the Striker/Hadrian problem in Iraq and what we were doing in Equatorial Guinea. And as far as I know there wasn’t, everything was legitimate. He finished his audit on the same day I learned about the photographs and the death of the priest who took them. I asked Conor about them, and he said they had to have been phonied up, Photoshopped or something, because whatever was supposed to be in them wasn’t true. Still, phony or not, we had to get them back, quickly and quietly, before they became public.
“I didn’t trust him then and I don’t trust him now. I think the photos are real. Otherwise the priest wouldn’t have been killed and the country so violently turned upside-down looking for them. What’s more, I don’t know that what White is doing isn’t at the direct order of Sy Wirth and the people at Hadrian.”
Marten watched her closely; her eyes, the movement of her body, anything that would tell him she was lying. He didn’t find it. Still, she’d given him only part of it; he wanted the rest. “That takes care of the army, SimCo, and the top guns at Striker and Hadrian. Where do you fit in? We’re not here now because you suddenly decided to take a vacation.”
Anne took a deep breath. “I told you before, it was personal. I want the photographs to use against Wirth and Hadrian and Conor White. Threaten to turn them over to the Ryder Commission if they don’t cease arming the insurgency and stop provoking an already terrible war. Maybe even more important to me personally”—her eyes filled with emotion—“I want to save what’s left of the reputation of my father’s company for him. For his memory.
“My mother got very sick when I was three. She was in the hospital for a month. She didn’t recognize me or my father. Nobody knew what was wrong. Finally she came out of it. The experience scared the hell out of me. It did the same to him. I was very young, but I could see it. He was all but lost. I wanted so much to help him, but I couldn’t.
“As I told you, my mother died when I was thirteen. It was brain cancer. She didn’t live long, but it was awful for her and my dad. Like the first time, he tried to protect me from it while he was falling apart himself. How he kept everything together—me, himself, the company—I don’t know. When she died, he and I went on together. It was his life and my life at the same time, and we went on like that until I went to college. But we never lost the closeness, not even later when I got married. I loved him very much. I respected him even more. I was holding his hand when he died.” She paused, then let her eyes find his. “Is that enough explanation for you?”
“Almost.”
Suddenly her anger roared back. “What the hell else do you want to know?”
“Whose place this is. Who you’re relying on to get us out of Berlin. Who you had following me earlier so that you knew where I was and where I went when I left the hotel to meet Haas.”
These were questions from before that so far she’d managed not to answer. But she knew he’d keep asking now until he had an answer, either that or he would simply walk out as he’d threatened.
“Things were arranged through old friends,” she said quietly. “I lived in Berlin for eighteen months some years ago.”
“Doing what?”
She didn’t reply.
“Doing what?” he repeated.
“I was an employee of the U.S. government.”
“As?”
“My job was classified.”
“Classified?”
“Yes.”
“Meaning you were an operative of some kind.”
“I . . . worked for the CIA.”
10:30 P.M.
34
HARRINGTON LAKE, CANADA, THE OFFICIAL COUNTRY
RETREAT OF THE PRIME MINISTER OF CANADA.
STILL FRIDAY, JUNE 4. 4:35 P.M.
President Harris walked down a country path with Canadian prime minister Elliot Campbell, Campbell’s wife, Lorraine, and Emiliano Mayora, the president of Mexico. The weather was warm with puffy clouds that occasionally darkened, suggesting rain later in the day. All were dressed casually for the walk that was purposefully about nothing, an opportunity for the leaders of the Americas northern-most countries to chitchat and spend a little unofficial time in one another’s company before getting back to the formal discussions of trade and mutual security that brought them there.
A conversation about fly-fishing had seen Prime Minister Campbell and President Mayora move ahead of the others, leaving President Harris alone with Mrs. Campbell. Cute and perky, she took the opportunity to ask him how he was doing personally, gently reminding him that he was quite a handsome man who had not been seen publicly with a woman since the death of his wife during his presidential campaign some two years earlier.
“Frankly, I haven’t had much time to think about it.” President Harris smiled graciously. “This is a big job.”
“That part I fully understand, Mr. President. Still, you do think about it. I saw the longing in your eyes as you spoke. For everything you do and have to do, you are lonely for companionship.”
This time John Henry Harris’s smile was more inward and delicate. “You’re very perceptive, Mrs. Campbell, I am lonely. But my longing is still for my wife. I miss her a great deal. I do my best not to think about it.”
“Mr. President,” a voice suddenly called from behind them.
Harris and Mrs. Campbell turned to see Lincoln Bright, the president’s chief of staff, press through the gaggle of Secret Service agents following them and come quickly forward.
“Excuse me, Mr. President, Madame Campbell.” Bright looked to the president. “Representative Ryder is calling from Qatar. It’s important.”
“I’ll take the call,” Harris turned to Lorraine Campbell. “Plea
se excuse me for a few minutes. Tell the prime minister and President Mayora I’ll catch up with you all shortly.”
“Of course, Mr. President.”
4:47 P.M.
President Harris took Joe Ryder’s call over a secure phone in the comfortably rustic guest quarters of the Harrington Lake estate.
“You’ve heard what’s happened in Berlin?” Ryder’s voice was filled with concern.
“The Theo Haas murder.”
“Yes.”
“I know about it, that’s all. Did Marten reach him before it happened?”
“Marten is wanted for his murder.”
“What?” Harris was astounded.
“It’s all over TV. In the Washington Post, New York Times, and in about every other major paper as well as on the Internet. I realize you’ve been busy and probably not tuned in to this stuff, and certainly no one would advise you. There would be no reason to; they wouldn’t know the connection.”
“My God, Joe, where the hell is he?”
“As far as I know, on the run in Berlin. There’s a woman with him. So far they haven’t released her name, or his, for that matter.”
“Then how do you know it’s Marten?”
“Someone took his picture with a cell phone. It’s not a very good likeness. But it’s him, or his double, without doubt. You showed me a photo of the two of you together when you suggested him for the job.” Ryder hesitated. “John, Mr. President. You can’t get involved. You can’t try to help him. Not even with your own people. You can’t risk the connection.”
President Harris stared off at nothing. “I know, dammit. He knows it, too.”
“What do we do?”
“Nothing. Just wait and hope to hell he finds a way to get in touch with me.”
“Then what?”
“Something. I’m not sure. I’ll work on it.”
“What if he did kill Haas?”
“He didn’t.”
“You’re certain?”
“Damned certain.”
“I’m here for you, John. Whatever, whenever.”
“I know, Joe, we’ll work it out. And thanks. Thanks for being there in all this. I’ll call you when I have news.”