by Allan Folsom
Anne nodded.
“I don’t understand. Striker/Hadrian is a State Department issue, not national security or intelligence. If it was, the CIA or FBI would be doing the investigating, not the Ryder Commission. You were in the Agency. Why would it be involved at all, let alone to that degree?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. But if it’s true and somehow Erlanger found out, maybe through his own poking around, which is his nature . . . You understand? He did what he was told and brought in the Cessna instead of a jet—then tried to warn me away. I doubt if he knew about the bug.”
Marten stared at her. “I think you do know.”
There was the briefest moment when Anne did nothing at all. Finally she glanced at Brigitte, then looked back to Marten, her eyes cutting into him, her voice low and fiery. “I said I don’t know and I meant it. I’ve told you everything. There is nothing else. Understand?”
Marten didn’t react. She could get as mad as she wanted, he wasn’t about to let go. “Let’s assume that what you’ve said is true and get back to the photographs. You and your friends at Striker want them. Maybe for different reasons, but you both still want them. No doubt the Hadrian people do, too. So do the Equatorial Guinean army, Conor White and his pals at SimCo, and now the CIA. It’s starting to play like some kind of comedy where all kinds of crazy people are chasing after the same thing. Or a darker, more murderous one, if they’re just as insane but don’t laugh much. It should be entertaining, but it’s not. A civil war is going on. People are being butchered by the hour. What I saw myself was bad enough. The CIA video pushed it over the top.”
Again Anne glanced toward the cockpit—if Brigitte had heard over the engine noise, she didn’t acknowledge it. Anne looked back to Marten and softened. “Those things we saw on the video are as raw in my mind as they are in yours and won’t go away. Your ragging on me as if I’m hiding something does nothing but get me mad and doesn’t help anybody. I’ve told you the truth all along, and if you don’t believe it we can stop right here. When we land I get out and walk away. Then the whole thing is in your lap. You deal with it.”
Marten said nothing, just searched her eyes. He didn’t know what to believe except that as much as he might have delighted in the idea of her walking away before, he didn’t now. Whatever the Erlanger thing was, it was too important to abandon.
“What if I told you I did believe you. And probably have all along.”
“Then I’d say I’m not so sure I believe you.”
“Then that puts us in the same fix. Neither of us knows what to believe.” Marten looked at her a second longer, then at the bug in his hand and the blinking red light in the center of it. “You know how to disable this thing?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He said with a smile. “I’ll tell you when.”
2:37 A.M.
56
LEARJET 55, IN A HOLDING PATTERN OVER THE BAY OF
BISCAY JUST OFF BILBAO, SPAIN. AIRSPEED 310 MPH.
ALTITUDE 27,200 FEET. 2:52 A.M.
Emil Franck was slouched in his seat, half dozing, thinking of his children on their own, continents away, and at the same time watching the green dot showing the Cessna’s progress on the laptop in front of him. From somewhere in the dimness of the cabin behind him he heard Kovalenko talking in Russian, presumably on his cell phone. The conversation was brief. He heard him sign off and in a moment came forward and sat down across from him.
“Moscow has just informed me that two other jet aircraft are tailing the Cessna,” he said.
“What?” Franck sat up quickly. “What aircraft? Who are the people involved?”
“One is the chairman of the Striker Oil and Energy Company. The other plane has been chartered by the head of the private security firm hired to protect Striker’s interests in Equatorial Guinea. His name is Conor White. He’s a Brit, a former col o nel in the SAS.”
“Striker is after the photographs, too.”
“So it seems.”
“If mercenaries are involved it means weapons.”
“Probably.”
“Why two planes? Why aren’t they traveling together?”
“I don’t know.”
“What is the origin of the information? How did Moscow get it?”
“I wasn’t told.”
Franck stared at him. It had been a long time since he’d had Moscow thrust into his life. He didn’t like it.
“What were you told?”
“To keep them informed of Marten’s position.”
“Which they, in turn, will pass on to some nameless entity who then forwards it to Striker and White.”
Kovalenko nodded.
Franck glanced at the slowly moving green dot that was the Cessna on his laptop, then stood and walked partway down the aisle between the seats. He stopped and turned back. “Moscow is trying to serve its own interests without ruffling someone’s feathers. So they give you this information as a way of telling us to make sure these dual problematicals don’t get the pictures before we do.”
“Yes.”
“Just how are we to accomplish that?”
“Moscow has left it to us. And I leave it to you. You are famous for your ‘creative thinking,’ Hauptkommissar. Besides, we are in Europe, not Rus sia. Things are different here.”
Franck stared at him. He hated these Moscow people.
“Well?” Kovalenko pushed him.
“We let them follow the Cessna to Málaga and see what Marten does. I guarantee you it’s not his final stop. But then you know him better than I do. What is he thinking?”
“By now it’s reasonable to assume he knows, or at least thinks, he’s being followed. That means he will find some way to get where he’s going despite that handicap. He has a rather determined personality and is quite clever at using it.”
“So?”
“I seriously doubt he would set down in Málaga. He doesn’t file a flight plan for all to see and then follow it to the letter. Unless he’s going to some place around the corner, which I also doubt, it would be too obvious. On the other hand, if he did land and was still some distance from his target—even if he had arranged for a car—ground travel would be undependable and he would be easy to follow.”
“You think he’ll stay in the air until he’s close enough to where he’s going to make ground travel expedient. A reasonably short distance. An hour’s drive or less, either as you say, in an arranged car, or in a rental.”
“Yes,” Kovalenko nodded.
“Then we assume he will divert somewhere along the way. Since these other two aircraft are relying on us for his position, it’s very unlikely they will have him in line of sight. When he changes course we only need provide them with what information we think appropriate.”
Kovalenko smiled thinly. “Give them a little but not too much. A balancing act, Hauptkommissar. For Moscow’s sake.”
“And ours.”
3:07 A.M.
57
CESSNA 340, JUST NORTH OF MADRID. AIRSPEED 190.
ALTITUDE, 25,600 FEET. 3:30 A.M.
Anne was asleep or at least pretending to be, curled up in her seat and breathing easily, her seat belt loose over her waist. Marten sat next to her, pretending nothing. He was wide-awake and wired, every bit of him considering what to do about whoever might be following them, and then about Anne herself. No matter what she’d so vociferously said about telling him the truth—about wanting to stop the war, the importance of her father’s memory, even her promise to meet with Joe Ryder once they had the photos—the rest of it was just too iffy: the CIA connections; Erlanger and whoever else had helped them in Berlin; the sudden appearance of the former CIA jungle fighter, Patrice; the hidden transmitter on the plane; her own past as an Agency operative. Who knew what she really believed or where her true loyalties were? Too much was at stake to keep trusting her.
Meaning that it was best to do what he’d threatened before, get rid of her and go off on his own. Have Brigitt
e land in Málaga as planned. Go into the terminal with Anne, tell her he needed to use the men’s toilet facilities, and then simply disappear, find a way to get the two-hundred-odd miles to Praia da Rocha any way he could. Bus, train, even hitchhike. The 1985 Schengen Agreement had ended border checkpoints in most of continental Europe. The official Berlin police photograph of him had been fuzzy at best, and by now he had a day and a half’s growth of beard. All of which would help in the event his picture was still in the media, or if the Spanish and Portuguese police were on alert. All in all, it might work very well.
And he would have done it. Except for one thing; the Erlanger question.
The thing Anne had refused to reveal about his warning that had made her more intense, troubled, and determined than he’d seen her since they’d met. Whatever it was was a powerful intangible, one he was certain involved some larger truth about Striker and Hadrian and their operation in Equatorial Guinea. Because of it he was extremely hesitant to abandon her; if he did, something of great consequence might slip through his fingers. At least that was what he thought now and chose to believe. What he would do was revert to his original plan, land at Faro and have Anne rent a car, then together make the short drive to Praia da Rocha. Of course, that strategy raised other potential problems, especially if the airports were, as he’d considered, on alert and the authorities were looking not only for him but for her as well. It also made the question of what to do about whoever was tailing them critical.
He thought a moment longer, then unbuckled his seat belt and slid into the empty copilot’s seat next to Brigitte.
“Are we on time and on course?”
“Yes, sir. I estimate we’ll have wheels down in Málaga at a few minutes past five.”
“What’s the weather?”
“Overcast with a low cloud deck.”
“How thick is it?”
“Nine hundred feet, sir.”
“Will it affect our landing?”
“The deck is solid, but no, sir, no problem with the landing.”
He smiled. “Thank you.”
3:57 A.M.
58
SIMCO FALCON, APPROACHING MÁLAGA, SPAIN.
AIRSPEED 355 MPH.
ALTITUDE, 27,700 FEET. 4:49 A.M.
Conor White hunched forward in his seat. Headset on, his laptop open with a street map of Málaga on the screen, he was listening to Málaga air traffic control. Behind him, Patrice and Irish Jack had laid out their choice of weapons: two nine-and-a-half-inch fixed-blade, partially serrated jungle knives and accompanying nylon sheaths; two compact, lightweight, highly modified M-4 Colt Commando submachine guns with sound and flame suppressors and six 45 mm thirty-round magazines for each—firepower 750 rounds per minute; two Beretta 93R burst-firing 9 mm automatic pistols, with six twenty-round magazines for each. And then there were Conor White’s armaments: a similar nine-and-a-half-inch fixed-blade jungle knife; two modified Heckler & Koch 9 mm MP5 submachine guns with sound and flame suppressors and eight thirty-round magazines, firepower 800 rounds per minute; and one short-barrel SIG SAUER 9 mm semiautomatic handgun with four ten-round magazines that he used as a backup “hide gun,” kept under his jacket in a slim polymer holster at the back of his belt. This was the gun he had used to kill the young Spanish doctor in the farmhouse outside Madrid and, soon afterward, the driver of the hired car, whom he’d shot at point-blank range in the dilapidated barn.
4:52 A.M.
They were ninety miles out. Marten’s Cessna, D-VKRD, had already been cleared to enter the Málaga landing pattern. By White’s calculation, that should put the Cessna on the ground in about fifteen minutes, or approximately 5:07 A.M.
He had one man in the control tower and two in the terminal, one at the entrance from the tarmac, the other at the exit onto the street. A fourth and fifth waited in cars just outside, one near the taxi line, the other near the car rental agencies.
Once Marten landed, the plane would taxi to the terminal area, where he and Anne would disembark. Assuming the Berlin police hadn’t put out a Europe-wide APB for Marten, which would have the Spanish police closely watching arrivals at every airport, the two would simply enter the terminal, walk through the green NOTHING TO DECLARE customs door, and go into the terminal proper. There they would either take a taxi, rent a car from an airport agency, or use some other form of transportation yet to be determined. Anne might even have a car waiting. Whatever the case, once they left the terminal they would be followed by one or both of the men outside—and soon thereafter by himself, Patrice, and Irish Jack traveling in a dark green SUV that would be waiting for them at the edge of the tarmac, an SUV courtesy of Spitfire Ltd., a Madrid-based private security contractor that served most of the Iberian Peninsula—Spain, Portugal, Andorra, Gibraltar, and a tiny French territory in the Pyrenees—and was owned by a former SAS major, one of his closest friends.
For no particular reason, White thought of his father, Sir Edward Raines. For everything he had—money, political and military esteem, legitimate family of wife, daughter, two other sons, three grandchildren—the one thing he did not have was the Victoria Cross, which was the honor White treasured most. It was not only hugely prestigious, it put his name ahead of his father’s in British military history. But while queen and country had proudly and publicly saluted him for it, his father had not. He had been invited to the ceremony but had not come. Nor had he phoned, faxed, e-mailed, or written. It had been a golden opportunity for him to recognize his bastard son without ever saying it. The simplest of gestures. A handshake, a look in the eye, a word of congratulations would have been enough. It was the prize he coveted most of all, but it had not happened.
And now, at this moment, and for a reason he was unable to understand, the lack of recognition pained him more than it ever had in his life. It was a hurt that had been assuaged a hundred times over in combat when the face of the enemy had suddenly become that of his father and he’d struck at it with every ounce of fury he had. It was why he had been so successful in battle. Why he had received the Victoria Cross and the sea of Distinguished Service Order medals. It was why he would succeed again in the hours and minutes immediately ahead, because this time the enemy who would wear the face of Sir Edward Raines would be the person who stood between himself and ruin. Nicholas Marten.
“Cessna D-VKRD, you are in the landing pattern. Please change radio frequency to 267.5.” The voice of an air controller suddenly crackled over his headset.
“D-VKRD. Going to new frequency, 267.5,” he heard the Cessna’s female pilot reply.
“Copy to 267.5, D-VKRD.”
Abruptly White’s radio went to static as the Cessna pilot changed radio frequency. He took off the headphones and looked over his shoulder to Patrice and Irish Jack in the seats behind him.
“They’re on approach, gentlemen. Workday’s about to begin,” he said sharply. “Saddle up.”
4:55 A.M.
59
CESSNA, D-VKRD, ON APPROACH TO
MÁLAGA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT. 5:02 A.M.
Marten looked at his watch, counting down the time. Anne was awake now, watching him in the dimly lit cabin.
“Where do we go from here?” she asked quietly.
“That will depend on Brigitte.” Abruptly he undid his seat belt and climbed into the copilot’s seat next to her, just as he had an hour before. Below he could just make out the cloud deck in the beam of the plane’s landing lights. It was steel gray and forbidding, stretching out like some enormous glacier.
“How long before we’re in it?”
“About eight seconds.”
Marten glanced over his shoulder at Anne, then back out the windshield. He held his breath and counted down. Five, four, three, two—Then they were in it. The clouds swirled around them. He turned to Brigitte.
“This is what I want you to do.”
5:05 A.M.
SIMCO FALCON, 3C-B797K, 5:12 A.M.
Conor White felt the main landing gear hit; then
the plane’s nose angled over, and the front gear touched the runway. He saw the lighted terminal flash past, then heard the scream of the three Garrett turbofan engines as the pilot put them into reverse thrust. The plane slowed quickly. Another few seconds and they were at the end of the runway and coming back around. Instantly he was out of his seat and at the window looking for the Cessna as they taxied for the terminal. Patrice and Irish Jack were up, too, their weapons packed away in a pair of dark green and yellow sports-equipment bags, peering out, ready to go. All they saw was darkness and parked aircraft.
“Where the fuck is he?” Irish Jack was on edge. “Where the hell did he go?”
White was already on his cell phone talking to his man in the tower. “Where’s the Cessna that just landed?”
“The landing was aborted at the last second.”
“What?”
“The pilot reported radio trouble. Said she would refile a landing request.”
“Where did she go?”
“Don’t know. Her radio is still out.”
White glanced at Patrice and Irish Jack. “Son of a bitch used the cloud deck to dance out of here. He knows he’s being followed.” He turned back to the phone. “Refile us for immediate takeoff, then get me a reading of the Cessna’s transponder code. I want a location of that aircraft.”
“It may take a little time to find, sir. There is a lot of traffic in the area. Cessna’s not the only airplane up there.”
“My friend.” Conor White’s voice was filled with rage, “I can’t follow a plane when I don’t know where the hell it went! Find it. Find it fast! Find it now!” Conor White clicked off and looked to Patrice and Irish Jack. “Shit!” he said.
5:24 A.M.
LEARJET 55, FORTY MILES OUT FROM MÁLAGA.
AIRSPEED 310 MPH. ALTITUDE 14,200 FEET. SAME TIME.
