by Allan Folsom
7:19 A.M.
A small television sat on a bookshelf across the room. He went to it and turned it on, hoping for news of Hauptkommissar Franck’s investigation. Quickly he ran through the channels. There was nothing but Saturday-morning television, cartoons and sports and travel shows. Finally he found an English-language news channel where someone was giving the weather forecast for Europe. He looked at his watch and then at the door, wondering what time Anne had gone out. The weathercast segued to an Audi commercial. He went back to the window and looked out. There were more young people huddling under umbrellas. By now a line had begun to form. What was going on, especially this early on a Saturday morning? Then commercials ended and the news resumed, and he went back to the TV to watch it.
The story being covered was about a car that had exploded on a country highway. All he saw was police investigators and the burned-out wreckage of the car, and he assumed the location was somewhere in Germany. It wasn’t. It was Spain. The car had been a limousine; its driver was among the dead. A bomb was suspected. The other victims were thought to be three of five people missing since they’d arrived in Madrid the morning before on a flight from Paris, Spanish medical personnel just returned to Europe from Equatorial Guinea. Their names were being withheld pending formal identification of the bodies.
“Please, God, no!” Marten froze in horror. In the next instant he realized prayers and denial were useless. He knew exactly who the victims were—Marita and her students. The coincidence was far too great for it to have been anyone else. Shocked and sickened, he watched for a moment longer, then turned off the sound and walked away. His senses numb, he went into the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee, then just stood there staring at nothing. Finally he set the cup down and found his way into the bathroom.
He looked in the mirror. His complexion was ghostly white. There were paper cups by the sink. He filled one with tap water and drank it, then crumpled the cup and dropped it into the wastepaper basket. He went back into the front room to stare at the TV still playing in silence. He saw one commercial and then another. Next came a business news brief. Then a replay of the story about the limousine explosion.
The initial account had reported the victims missing since they’d arrived in Madrid yesterday. Suddenly it occurred to him that if the police had the bodies of the limo driver and three of the five missing people, where were the other two? And who were they? Marita and one of the kids? Or two of the kids, with Marita among the dead in the exploded car?
Marten felt rage begin to heave through him. Unless there had been some terrible fluke of coincidence, whatever had happened had to have involved the photographs. This was the doing of AG Striker and SimCo. There was no point in even thinking it might have been operatives from President Tiombe’s cutthroat army. They might have had the will but not the kind of connections or swift response that a world-class mercenary like Conor White would have at his fingertips.
Meaning that what Anne had said about not trusting White and wanting to recover the photos herself in order to help slow the war and save the reputation of her father’s company would have been nothing more than a excuse to get him to trust her. Meaning, too, that she most certainly would have known about White’s activity in Spain. Maybe even helped orchestrate it. All of them making the assumption that, afraid something would happen to him, he had confided in Marita and the others and told them what the pictures were and where to find them. If that were so, it meant she didn’t give a damn about anything but protecting the company.
Marten left the TV and stood near the window watching the line of people with umbrellas in the alley below. Immediately his gaze shifted to the end of it where it met Ziegelstrasse. It was the way Anne would come when she returned.
Where the hell was she?
7:33 A.M.
39
LONDON, THE DORCHESTER HOTEL.
STILL SATURDAY, JUNE 5. 8:50 A.M.
(LONDON IS ONE HOUR EARLIER THAN BERLIN.)
Sy Wirth’s corporate Gulfstream G550 had had landed at Stansted Airport just after midnight. Immediately afterward a limousine had taken him into the city and to a private apartment in Mayfair. At 1:30 in the morning London time, he’d gone to bed. Four and a half hours later he was working out in the apartment’s gym. At 7:07 he showered, then dressed in dark blue suit and tie, his accent and ostrich skin boots the only outward remnants of his Texas persona. At 7:30 he left the Mayfair apartment and was driven to the Dorchester Hotel on Park Lane. At 7:45 he was seated in a private dining room awaiting the arrival of his guest. Three minutes later that person arrived with fanfare—the brash, designer-dressed, forty-eight-year-old Russian oil oligarch Dimitri Korostin with a gaggle of bodyguards in tow. Within seconds the bodyguards were gone, and the two greeted each other as the old friends and business adversaries they were. They ordered breakfast and began to make the ritual small talk.
“How are your children, Dimitri?”
“They are well, already in college, if you can believe it. Oxford, Yale, and the Sorbonne.” Korostin grinned, his Russian accent heavy. “Covering as many bases as possible given we only have the three. And how are you, Sy? Or are you again calling yourself Josiah, giving yourself some biblical dignity when you come to this side of the pond?”
“I’m in the oil business, Dimitri. I have no dignity, biblical or otherwise. Neither do you.”
“So we stop talking about children and other bullshit and get to the reason you are here. What do you want to sell?”
“Trade.”
“What for what?”
“I”—Wirth hesitated—“need your help.”
“That can be expensive.”
“Andean gas field lease, thirty-five years.”
“Which one?”
“The Magellan, in Santa Cruz–Tarija.”
“That is potentially a very big field.” Korostin smiled. “Your trouble must be personal.”
“Someone has a number of photographs and most probably the digital memory card from the camera used to take them. I want both recovered and returned to me with whatever package or packing they are in unopened.”
“You’re being blackmailed.”
Wirth nodded.
“A woman. A man, perhaps.”
Wirth nodded. Dimitri’s inference was as good a cover as any. “Sex can be a nasty business.”
“Surely you have your own people for these things.”
“I’m not convinced my people are going to get it done. For all its success the West is provincial. We have a tradition of trying to do things more or less the right way, even if it isn’t always legal. It’s a mind-set that doesn’t necessarily work, especially if the situation is urgent. You, on the other hand, take the shortest route to the problem and more often than not have a satisfactory outcome. I need only mention the former KGB agent poisoned with polonium right here in London.”
“The result is not always neat.”
“But it works just the same.” Wirth took a folded sheet of paper from his jacket and handed it to Korostin. “The Magellan/Santa Cruz–Tarija contract.”
Korostin slipped on reading glasses and opened it.
The document was on simple everyday stationery. There was no letterhead, nothing to identify where it had come from. The words covered barely two-thirds of a page, the deal spelled out in the simplest terms, the particulars, everything. Josiah Wirth’s signature was at the bottom of it.
“Everything’s there,” Wirth said. “The name of the principal person involved, Nicholas Marten. What I want done and how. When I have the items in my possession the Magellan/Santa Cruz–Tarija is yours.”
Korostin read it. Then read it again and looked up. “You want to be kept informed of our movements.”
“Each step of the way. I want to know where your people are and where Marten is. No action is to be taken on him until I am there, so that when the photographs and camera memory card are recovered they can be handed directly to me.”
“Th
at might be awkward.”
“You are a gifted man, Dimitri, you’ll find a way to make it work.”
Korostin smiled. “If the items are as damning as your offer suggests, how do you know I will keep my part of the bargain and not turn them against you?”
“Small as we are compared to the giants, Striker Oil has any number of long-term oil and gas field leases around the world. Something you well know. You might want to do business with us again. As I said, you are a gifted man. You wouldn’t jeopardize that opportunity.”
Korostin folded the paper and slipped it into his jacket. “When do you want the work completed?”
“Yesterday.”
40
BERLIN. 8:18 A.M.
Four people stood in the front room of a modest flat on Scharrenstrasse: Hauptkommissar Franck, Komissar Gertrude Prosser, two uniformed policemen, and Karl Betz. A fifth person, Betz’s wife, peeked anxiously through a door that led to the rest of the apartment. Betz was fifty-two, a little overweight, had a mustache and curly eyebrows, and was very nervous. He was also a waiter on the tour boat Monbijou.
Franck held up the official photograph of Nicholas Marten. “This is the man you served on the Monbijou last night.”
“Not served, exactly, Hauptkommissar.” Betz tried to smile through his uneasiness. “Actually he helped me serve. Along with his wife, that is. Or someone I took for his wife. They passed along a couple of glasses of beer to passengers seated next to them.”
“But it was him, you’re certain?” Franck pressed him impassively.
“He’s the one you’re looking for? The murderer of Theo Haas?”
“Is it the same man or is it not?”
“Yes, Hauptkommissar. It is the same man.”
“And the woman with him was the one described to you by Kommissar Prosser?”
“Yes, Hauptkommissar.”
“You said he was wearing something in particular.”
“A Dallas Cowboys baseball cap.” Betz smiled proudly. “I’ve been to Dallas. Dallas, Texas. I nearly bought a cap like that myself, but we were on a strict budget.”
“Where did they board the Monbijou?”
“I’m not exactly sure. Lustgarten dock, I think.”
“Where did they get off?”
“Weidendamm Bridge, the Friedrichstrasse crossing.”
“At what time?”
Betz suddenly looked at the floor.
“At what time, Herr Betz?” Franck pressed him.
The waiter looked back, more nervous than before. “We did nothing illegal. It was a special tour for foreign travel agents. It ran later than usual. We had a special permit; you can look it up. The boat was crowded. I don’t know how they got on, but they did.”
“Herr Betz, I am not the waterway police.” Franck was beginning to lose patience. “What time did they leave the boat?”
“Close to nine forty, Hauptkommissar. I looked at my watch as we docked.”
“Nine forty.”
“Yes, Hauptkommissar.”
“Thank you.”
8:24 A.M.
8:26 A.M.
Marten stood at the edge of the window looking down at the alley. Light rain still fell. The line of umbrella-huddling students inching forward seemed longer than ever.
Once, then twice he’d gone back to the television, turning the sound up, watching. Occasionally there had been repeats of the news story from Spain. If the Spanish police had more information on what had taken place there, they weren’t making it public. The same was true of the news from Berlin. The investigation into the savage murder of Theo Haas was ongoing. The police were asking the cooperation of the public in locating the man “wanted for questioning” in the killing. Again the fuzzy cell phone photograph of Marten had been shown, and with it a call in-number and e-mail address for contacting the police if he were seen. After that came the announcement that a media blackout had been imposed. That part Marten found even more troubling than the continued exposure of his picture. From his experience on the LAPD, a media blackout meant the police were on to a number of leads that were potentially significant and that they weren’t about to disclose. Often that meant an arrest was imminent.
He looked back to the front door.
Where was Anne? What was she doing that was taking so long? What if—his heart caught in his throat at the idea—something had happened and the police had her? She had his passport with her. How long would it be before they forced her to tell them where he was? Maybe that was the reason for the media blackout.
He felt sweat bead up on his forehead. Once again he thought of Spain and the two people still unaccounted for in the car bombing. He had to trust that the Spanish police knew what they were doing and that those missing would soon be found. Then again, maybe not. Who knew how far the limousine had traveled before it blew up? Maybe other police agencies were involved and there was a jurisdiction problem. Politics might figure in as well. Immediately the thought struck that the remaining two were still alive somewhere else in the countryside and at that moment were being tortured in order to get information about the photographs. It was something the police would have no way of knowing. How could they? Christ, he had to alert someone. But how?
Just then the television crackled with more breaking news. He crossed the room quickly to watch it. The report was live from Madrid, where the police were about to make an announcement concerning their investigation of the limousine explosion.
An icy feeling of dread crept through him as he watched a police spokesman approach a bank of microphones, then address the waiting media in Spanish. A studio announcer provided a voice-over English translation. Two bodies, he said, had been found in a shallow grave at an abandoned farm house less than five miles from the car bombing. Another body had been found in a ramshackle barn nearby. All three had been shot in the head. The first two victims were women; the third was a man. Identification of the dead was pending.
Marten stared at the screen, numb and transfixed. Slowly he looked off to the window and the gray sky and drizzle and vague buildings beyond it. His memory was vivid. He saw the faces of Marita and Ernesto, Rosa, Luis, and Gilberto as they sat at the table with him at the Hotel Malabo during the howling storm; slept across from and beside him on the night plane from Malabo to Paris; remembered clearly his exchange with Marita when they all said farewell at the airport in Paris and she pressed a page torn from a notebook into his hand and smiled her impish smile.
“My address and telephone number if you get to Spain. My e-mail if you don’t. Please call me if you have time. I want to know what happens to you.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me. I’m going home and back to work and grow old, nothing else.”
“You’re not a ‘nothing else’ person, Mr. Marten. I think you’re one of those people trouble follows around. We have to go. Please call me.”
As if from far away he heard the sound of the television. A commercial for skin cream. Suddenly his head felt light. A wave of dizziness swept over him, and the room began to spin. In the next second he felt his heart start to race. Almost immediately he struggled to get his breath. Sweat seemed to engulf him. He felt hot and cold at the same time. He didn’t know what was happening. He put a hand out against the wall to steady himself, gasping for air as he did. He felt trapped, as if the walls were closing in. He wanted to get out of there. Be outdoors in the open. Then the sound of his own voice rose above that of the television and the deep rasp of his labored breathing. It came from far inside and was powerful and intense and filled with rage and chanting a litany of names over and over like some demonic mantra.
Striker, Hadrian, Conor White, Anne Tidrow.
Striker, Hadrian, Conor White, Anne Tidrow.
Striker, Hadrian, Conor—
Suddenly there was another sound. That of a key being put into the front door. He pushed back against the wall and froze. A half second later the door opened.
“Nicholas?” a familiar voice called o
ut. “Nicholas?”
Anne Tidrow.
41
He remembered seeing her close the door and lock it, then turn toward him. She had her purse and a garment bag over one arm and was pulling a cheap plastic rain cover from her hair. The rest he had little recollection of. All he knew now was that she was sitting in a chair by the television staring at him, her hair disheveled, the garment bag and her purse on the floor. And that he was leaning against the wall breathing deeply, his arms across his chest, trying not to look at her.
“Tell me what happened,” she said quietly.
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“I—”
“Tell me.”
Slowly his eyes went to hers. “I grabbed you by the throat and shoved you against the wall. Hard. And held you there.”
“What did you say?”
“I didn’t say. I asked.”
“Asked what?”
“Why them?”
“And what did I say?”
“Who are you talking about?” Marten could feel his jaw tighten in anger. “You knew exactly who I was talking about.”
“No. I didn’t. I still don’t.”
“Fuck you.”
“Tell me.”
“You want me to spell it out?”
“Yes.”
“The Spanish doctor and her medical students. I’ll name them for you. Marita, Ernesto, Rosa, Luis, Gilberto. Marita wasn’t even thirty. None of the students were more than twenty-three. They’re all dead! Murdered! Somewhere outside Madrid. God only knows what happened before they were killed.”
“Nicholas, I didn’t know. Believe me. How could I?”
“I said—fuck you.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Jesus God.” Marten walked over to the window and stood beside it staring out. He felt like putting his foot through it and yelling at the people below that there was a real live murderer in here and they should call the police.
