“As the late Hauptkommissar said.”
“They will not be watching now because he had called them off. But be very careful where you go next, tovarich.” Kovalenko let the slightest grin escape. “I trust we remain the best of friends and that you will not use my own weapon against me. If you did you would then have two bodies to explain.” He nodded at Anne, then, just like that, turned for the door and was gone.
They watched through the window as he walked up the gravel driveway to the Peugeot with Franck’s body in the trunk. A moment later he got in, started the engine, and drove off.
Marten waited until he disappeared from view at the top of the driveway, half expecting a phalanx of police to suddenly materialize and start down toward them. It didn’t happen. Most likely because Franck, as Kovalenko had said, had called them off. He gave it another thirty seconds, then went down the hallway and began gathering the photographs.
Anne was watching the driveway. “Conor and his men won’t be far behind.”
“White’s not our only concern.” Marten slipped the pictures into the plastic wrapping and then into the envelope. “Kovalenko’s got to leave the car somewhere. Once Franck’s body is found, every cop in Europe will be looking for us thinking we killed him. And there won’t be a lot of confusion about where to start. Right here.”
1:21 P.M.
74
STILL PRAIA DA ROCHA, THE SANTA CATARINA FORTRESS.
SAME TIME.
The old fort was at the eastern end of Avenida Tomás Cabreira and on the banks of the Rio Arade near its mouth, where it emptied into the sea. It had been constructed in 1621 to defend the cities of Silves and Portimão from Moors and Spanish pirates. Now it was little more than a tourist attraction, a series of ancient stone buildings and a small chapel devoted to St. Catherine of Alexandria, its terrace giving sweeping views of the Atlantic, the river, and Praia da Rocha’s beaches and sandstone cliffs. It also was a place for Josiah Wirth and Conor White to meet while they tried to put together what went wrong and if there was yet a way to do something about it.
Some fifty yards distant, Patrice and Irish Jack sat in a black Toyota Land Cruiser in the fortress’s parking lot watching them. They could see Wirth pacing back and forth on the terrace talking vigorously into his BlackBerry while White stood patiently nearby, the bright sunshine reflecting like a shimmering wall off the sea behind them.
Irish Jack lifted a pair of binoculars and pointed them in their direction. Immediately both men came into close focus. A second later, Wirth clicked off the Blackberry and stared off in disgust.
“Maybe your friend has nothing to report, Mr. Wirth, and that is the reason he hasn’t been in contact.” Conor White was deliberately composed and accommodating, desperately trying to remain civil to a man he wholly detested. “Maybe his people were on top of Marten and he sidestepped them, like he did all of us in Málaga. Maybe he’s still somewhere here in Praia da Rocha. Try your friend again. He might be in a dead zone, or something’s wrong with his cell. Maybe by now he has it working and knows something.”
“He isn’t in a dead zone for more than an hour. There’s nothing wrong with his cell, either. He’s not taking my calls because he doesn’t want to.”
“Then something went wrong with Anne and Marten.”
“Nothing went wrong,” Wirth spat angrily, then lifted the BlackBerry again and walked off to stare out at the Atlantic where a dozen or more sailboats were passing by in some sort of regatta.
White could see him punch in a number, then wait while it rang through. Seconds later he clicked off, then clicked on again and apparently tried another number.
What happened between the time Wirth had given them Praia da Rocha as Marten’s destination and the time they arrived to take care of him, there was no way to know. But at this stage Wirth was clearly in a state of what White called controlled emotional upheaval. Not much different from the behavior he’d observed over the few months he’d known him. Yet his emotional state now was the worst he’d seen and the cracks were beginning to show. Clearly he felt he’d been double-crossed, cut out of the picture at the last moment. Not only was he outraged that it had happened, he didn’t know what the hell to do about it.
Before, when they’d been close on Marten’s tail, when they’d finally learned where he’d landed and then gone, there had been every expectation that they would soon recover the photographs and their fears would come to an end. Seemingly that was no longer the case. If whoever this third party was that Wirth had engaged to track Marten down had intercepted him along the way and retrieved the photos, he/she/they would have known something of what was in them from the beginning. Meaning they had planned all along to recover them for their own purposes. Meaning, too, that White’s long-held fear that the Striker chairman had gotten in far over his head had suddenly become a horrendous reality. If he’d hated Josiah Wirth before, he hated him more now than anyone he’d ever met. And that included his father.
“Conor,” Wirth called sharply, then turned and came excitedly toward him. “An envelope has been sent to my hotel in Faro.”
“The photographs?” White felt a jolt of impossible hope, as if some wild ray of good fortune had suddenly and unbelievably shined down from above. Maybe there was a chance yet. Maybe he had been wrong. Maybe Wirth wasn’t the fool he thought.
“All I was told was that an envelope was being messengered to the hotel.” Wirth started for the parking lot and the black Land Cruiser. “We won’t know what’s in it until we get there.”
1:42 P.M.
75
LIVROS USADOS GRANADA. 1:47 P.M.
Stump Logan was behind the checkout counter as they came in. They were hot and sweaty and looking as if they had just walked a considerable distance in the midday heat and done so quickly.
“I wonder if we might use your office for a few minutes,” Marten said intensely, squinting a little as his eyes adjusted from the bright sun outside to the relative darkness of the store. Anne was just behind him.
“My office,” Logan said flatly, peering through his thick glasses, first at Marten, then at Anne, and then back to Marten. Marten had a large padded envelope tucked under his arm. Something he hadn’t seen on the couple’s first visit.
“Actually I think Anne would like to use the restroom first,” Marten said. “That is, if you have one.”
Logan studied him a moment longer, then looked at Anne. “All the way to the back and down a flight of stairs into the basement. It’s not much, but it works.”
“Thank you.” Anne glanced at Marten and went off in the direction the book dealer had sent her.
Logan lifted the glasses and looked at Marten intently. “You’re in trouble.”
“More than a little. I’m afraid we need your help, and badly.”
Just then a middle-aged couple came in and began to look over the books in the front of the store. “Why don’t you see to them,” Marten said quickly. “If it’s alright, I’ll wait in your office.”
Logan nodded toward the back. “You know where it is.”
“Thank you.”
Marten walked off. Other than the couple who had just entered there were no other customers. The only employee he saw was the thirty-something woman with short dark hair and a light summer dress who’d been at the checkout counter when they’d come in the first time. She was on the far side of the room with her back to him, intent on rearranging a display of books.
It had all been planned. They’d left the rented Opel in a parking area near the beach, then walked to the only refuge they knew, Logan’s bookstore. The whole way they’d looked for both the police and Conor White, who they knew had to be closing in on them in one way or another. The idea had been to get to Logan’s store as quickly as possible, then get him alone, tell him as much of the story as was necessary, and ask for his help. They were taking a chance, but there was nowhere else to go, and he’d helped before. Now they were praying he’d do it again, if for no other
reason than his past relationship with Theo Haas and Father Willy. The idea of sending Anne to the restroom had come to Marten as they entered—give him a chance to work Logan singly, man on man, before she came fully into the picture. At least that was what he’d told her. What he really wanted was to find a way to be alone for a few minutes so that he could call President Harris and tell him where he was and what had happened. He hadn’t been sure how he would do it, but then the middle-aged couple had come in and the problem had been solved, at least for the moment.
Just ahead was the door to Logan’s office. Marten opened it and went in.
1:59 P.M.
8:59 A.M. IN CAMP DAVID, MARYLAND.
President Harris had been sequestered in a small study off his bedroom for the last two hours. Note pad and pencil at his sleeve, he was taking yet another maddening pass, trying to cut fat from the proposed new federal budget when the slate gray cell phone on the table next to him rang. It startled him, and for a moment he did nothing; then it rang again. Immediately he realized what it was, and picked up.
“Where are you? What happened? Are you alright?” he spat emotionally, the words run together like a jet stream of consciousness.
“Praia da Rocha. The back office of a used-book store.”
In ninety seconds Marten told him everything. Recovering the photographs. Striker’s massive oil find in Bioko and Moscow’s knowledge of it. That Anne was still with him. Kovalenko’s arrival with Franck and subsequent killing of him. That Franck had been working for the CIA. His own fear that a huge police dragnet would be put out for him once Franck’s body was found. Everything, that was, but the business about Kovalenko and the camera’s memory card. That was something that could wait for later.
“What about Joe Ryder?” Marten asked at the end.
“He’s left Iraq and is on his way to Rome and then Lisbon, where he’ll meet you,” the president said. “He’ll be at the Four Seasons Ritz, but not until tomorrow morning at the earliest. He has a dinner tomorrow night with Lisbon’s mayor. The whole thing has been played as a courtesy call on his way back to Washington. The mayor’s wife and Ryder’s support the same international charity, so it’s a logical cover. It’s a long way from Iraq to Portugal, so you should have more than enough time to get to Lisbon even if you have to slow it down. The question is, police or not, can you do it? Can you get there?”
“What about a safe house?”
“One has been set up for you in Lisbon, a small apartment in the old part of the city, the Bairro Alto”—Harris picked up a notebook from the table and opened it—“number seventeen Rua do Almada. Ask for a woman named Raisa Amaro. She lives in a flat on the first floor. She knows you’re coming. It’s not fancy, but it’ll do until Ryder arrives. Go there and stay there. He’ll know where you are and how to get in touch. So again, can you get there? If you don’t think so, I’ll try to arrange something else.”
“We’ll get there.”
“Good. Call me the minute you’re safe. I’ll take the information you gave me and work on it. If the oil field is what you say it is, the find is hugely strategic. No matter what you think of them, Striker’s done a great job of keeping it quiet. Still, the handling of the rest from here on in, your end to mine, has to be done with extreme caution. None of this can get out.”
“Cousin,” Marten warned, “don’t go near the CIA. Something is still very wrong.”
“The Lisbon station chief already knows Ryder’s coming. But that’s all he knows. Ryder will be under the protection of the State Department’s Regional Security Office. The RSO will coordinate his movements, but they won’t know about you or Ms. Tidrow. Joe Ryder’s pretty resourceful. He’ll find a way for you to meet him alone.”
“Thank you, my friend,” Marten said quietly, gratefully.
“You’re the one to thank, cousin. Take damn good care of yourself. Good luck and Godspeed.”
2:06 P.M.
Marten clicked off just as Logan’s door opened. Anne came in, followed by Stump Logan.
Anne looked at the cell phone in Marten’s hand, then at Marten. “Are we disturbing something?”
“An old girlfriend.”
“An old girlfriend? Right now, in the middle of all this?”
“Well, yes . . .”
“How old?”
“Let’s just say—from a long time ago.”
“And she still has your number?”
“And how.” Marten grinned a little, then slid the cell into his jacket. Abruptly the grin faded, and he looked to Logan. “Please close the door.”
He waited until Logan did, then looked at him directly. “A Berlin policeman followed me here investigating the murder of Theo Haas. He was killed at Cádiz’s home by a man who was with him and who later drove off with the body in the trunk of his car. Once it’s found the police will blanket this whole area, thinking I killed him. As I said earlier, all of this has to do with the civil war in Equatorial Guinea. Ms. Tidrow and I have a meeting tomorrow in Lisbon that hopefully will—”
“We do?” Anne interrupted him in surprise. Her look told him everything. She knew what the phone call had been about, that he had somehow arranged for them to meet with Joe Ryder in Lisbon. It was clear, too, that she realized she had little choice but to go through with her promise to meet him. At least for now.
“Yes, we do,” he said emphatically. Immediately he turned back to Logan. “That meeting may well change the course of the war. But none of it will happen if the police have us in custody.”
“You want me to help you get to Lisbon.”
“Yes.”
Logan glanced at Anne, then looked back to Marten. “Suppose you did kill the policeman. Theo Haas, too. Maybe even Father Willy. What if everything you’ve told me is a lie? I help you and the police find out, then what?”
“That’s something you have to decide for yourself. Theo Haas put this whole thing in motion to begin with because he was concerned for his brother’s safety and because of what he had uncovered in Bioko. He’s the reason I went there to meet with Father Willy and why I came here looking for Jacob Cádiz. It’s also the reason I was followed to his house by both the German policeman and the man who ended up killing him, a high-level Russian security operative. They were supposed to be on the same page but weren’t.” Marten pushed harder. “What I’m telling you is the truth. If it wasn’t, Ms. Tidrow and I could just as easily have tried to get to Lisbon on our own. We came to you because you knew Theo Haas and Father Willy and what kind of men they were. You’ve lived here a long time, you know how things operate. We’ve got to get out before the police close in or we won’t get out at all, and everything we’ve worked for, what Father Willy died for, will have been for nothing. Please, I’m begging you. Can you help us? Will you help us?”
Stump Logan took off his thick glasses and wiped his eyes, then put them back on. “It might be a grave error on my part, Mr. Marten,” he said finally. “But yes, I will try to help you.”
2:13 P.M.
76
FARO, HOTEL LARGO. 2:30 P.M.
Sy Wirth and Conor White came in the front entrance and went straight to the front desk, leaving Patrice and Irish Jack to wait outside in the black Toyota SUV. At this point Wirth had wholly abandoned the idea of keeping his distance from White. Too much was at stake, emotionally and physically, if the package Korostin had promised contained the photos and the camera’s memory card as he hoped—as the Russian had indicated when he’d so surprisingly and belatedly reached him as he stood with White at the Santa Catarina fortress in Praia da Rocha.
“You will find the terms of the contract have been fulfilled, Josiah,” he’d said with quiet assurance. “Everything is in a large envelope that is on its way by messenger to your hotel in Faro now. Things didn’t quite work out as planned. I apologize. We’ll do better the next time.” That he’d clicked off with no mention of either Marten or Anne didn’t matter. If the contract had been fully executed, the whole thing would
be over anyway. What had happened to the others would be irrelevant. He would immediately destroy the photographs and the memory card, and they could all breathe a monstrous sigh of relief. Afterward White and his men would simply fly back to Malabo, and he would return to Houston.
“I’m Mr. Wirth, room 403. You have a package for me,” he said to a tallish red-haired woman behind the front desk.
“Yes, sir.” She turned and disappeared into a back room.
Wirth glanced at Conor White. Then the woman came back carrying a large padded envelope and handed it to him.
“How was it delivered?” he asked.
“I believe a taxi driver brought it, sir. I was at lunch at the time. I can check on it for you.”
“No matter,” he said and with a nod at White walked off toward the elevators.
Wirth pushed the button, the elevator door slid open, and he and White entered. Immediately he pushed the fourth-floor button and the door started to close. Suddenly it pulled back and a young couple entered. The man held the hand of a little boy. His wife, or at least the woman with him, was noticeably pregnant. Both smiled and nodded politely as they entered. Neither man responded.
They rode up in silence. Second floor. Third. The car stopped at the fourth, and they all got off. Wirth let them walk off down the corridor in front of them; then he and White followed. At room 403, Wirth stopped and slid his keycard through the slot in the door. A green light flashed, and the two men entered.
“Lock it,” Wirth said and went anxiously to a writing desk near the window. The moment he reached it, he tore the envelope open and dumped its contents on the desk. “What the fuck?”