by Allan Folsom
Marten looked at him and then at the Glock. “After all this time you need that with me?”
Kovalenko smiled. “For now, tovarich, I think it is best.”
12:35 P.M.
72
Ninety seconds later they were inside the house, the front door closed, standing in the hallway. Franck’s submachine gun was slung over Kovalenko’s shoulder, the Glock still in his hand. Anne and Marten stood in front of him, the envelope open, the photos spread out on the wooden table. Marten turned them over one by one.
“Him,” Kovalenko said suddenly and pointed a finger at a photo of Conor White. “This man is Conor White.”
“I know,” Marten said.
“He’s one of those following you.”
“As I suspected.”
“You know him, then?”
“I met him in passing.” Marten glanced at Anne.
“Be very careful, tovarich. He is a highly decorated former British combat officer with a great deal to lose personally if these”—he touched the stack of photos—“are made public.”
“I know that, too.”
Anne was staring at Kovalenko. “Who else is following us?”
“Two of his fighters.” Kovalenko reached out a finger and pushed aside the photos until he found the one he wanted, the one showing Patrice and Irish Jack in a helicopter doorway. “These.”
Anne exchanged glances with Marten, then looked back to Kovalenko. He wasn’t telling her everything. “You said ‘others.’ Who are they? Your people? Who and how many?”
“As far as I know, only one, Ms. Tidrow. The head of your own company.”
“Sy Wirth?”
Kovalenko nodded. “He is, or at least was, traveling separately and feeding information about your position to White and his men. Where any of them are now I don’t know.”
“Where did Wirth get this timely information he was passing on?” Marten said, then deliberately looked at Anne.
“Don’t even think it,” she snapped. “I haven’t talked to him since we were in Malabo.” She nodded at Kovalenko. “Why don’t you ask him how he knows all this.”
Kovalenko smiled easily. “Moscow.”
There was no smile from Marten. “I should be surprised, but I’m not. I suppose Moscow knew about Jacob Cádiz, too.”
“It took a little time, but yes.”
“Why would Father Willy send the photographs to him and not his brother? Was he that close a friend?”
Kovalenko cocked his head and grinned. “You honestly don’t know.”
“Know what?”
Kovalenko’s free hand swept around, indicating the house. “This is the place Theo Haas came to work and get out of the Berlin cold and the public spotlight of a Nobel laureate. He didn’t want people coming around bothering him, so he used the name Jacob Cádiz. He spoke Portuguese well; few people knew.” Abruptly his expression changed. He put the photos aside and picked up the folded white envelope with the camera’s digital memory card inside. “What is this?”
Marten didn’t answer.
Kovalenko unfolded it and slid out the card. “Ah,” he said, smiling, “the cake’s frosting.” Suddenly his eyes found Marten’s. “You’ve looked at its contents.”
“Some, not all.”
“Where is the computer you were using to view it?”
“In the other room,” Marten said quietly, still trying to understand what Kovalenko was doing here and why Moscow was involved.
“I was assigned before I knew you were in the middle of it,” Kovalenko said as if he had read Marten’s thoughts. “Moscow has been watching the developments in Equatorial Guinea closely. She is always intrigued when a Western oil company shows undue interest in an area and begins building up its operation there, especially in West Africa, where there are potentially large untapped reserves. If something should prove of value it would be strategically unfortunate if other countries, especially the Chinese, got to bid on it first. I’m sure you can appreciate that kind of thinking. It’s merely good business.”
“So one would think.”
73
12:54 P.M.
Marten glanced at Kovalenko, then powered up Jacob Cádiz’s computer and slid the memory card into its port. Anne was in a chair to his right. Kovalenko sat on a stool to one side and behind them, the Glock in his hand, Franck’s Heckler & Koch machine gun still dangling from his shoulder.
“Let’s see what we have, tovarich,” he said as the screen came to life. Marten touched the mouse, and a photograph popped up on the monitor. It had been taken with a long lens and apparently from a hidden vantage point in the brush. It was a portrait of a bizarre picnic in the jungle. Six white wicker chairs were pulled up to a long table covered with a white linen cloth, two on either side, one at either end. Fine china, silverware, and expensive wineglasses sat atop the table. White-gloved soldiers in the dress uniform of the Army of Equatorial Guinea stood by as waiters. Another of them carved a huge roast on a serving table nearby. Two more, in full dress and seemingly of high rank, were seated along one side of the linen-covered table. Opposite them were Conor White’s lieutenants, Patrice and Irish Jack, dressed in their trademark tight black T-shirts and camouflage pants. Several more SimCo mercenaries stood in the background, their muscular arms crossed over their chests. All had buzz cuts and wore wraparound sunglasses and had automatic pistols strapped to their thighs.
Conor White himself wore a tailored white suit with an open-collared starched white shirt and sat at one end of the table. Another man sat at the far end, his back to the camera.
“Go to the next,” Kovalenko said.
Marten touched the mouse, and the next photo came up. In it the other man was revealed. He was older, had jet black eyes, and wore the dress uniform of an Equatorial Guinean army general.
“Mariano,” Marten said, surprised.
“Generalissimo Mariano Vargas Fuente. You know him?” Kovalenko marveled.
“I had the pleasure of being interrogated by a unit of the Equatorial Guinean army. He sat in on the party.”
“You were lucky not to be butchered on the spot. He’s Chilean. Was once an officer in the Directorate of National Intelligence under Augusto Pinochet. He was personally responsible for the death squads and the unspeakable horrors they committed. Thousands of people vanished under his watch, and then he suddenly—”
“Disappeared into the jungles of Central America,” Marten finished for him. “Or so I was told. How did he get to Equatorial Guinea and when?”
“He was living under an assumed name in southern Spain. That was until your friend Conor White recruited him for the Equatorial Guinean army.”
“White?”
“Yes, but secretly. President Tiombe thinks he did it alone. Sought out Mariano and paid him a fortune to run the E.G. counterinsurgency.”
“Why?” Marten was mystified.
“For Mr. Tiombe to demonstrate to the people that this is how he handles troublemakers.”
“He doesn’t know White set it up?”
“Probably not.”
Marten looked sharply to Anne. “Did Striker Oil order White to arrange the Mariano contract?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it was Sy Wirth’s doing with Loyal Truex pulling strings. Maybe White did it for his own reasons. However it happened, I had no knowledge of it.”
“There seems to be a lot you don’t know about your own company.”
“That’s why I’m here with you, darling, to find out.” Anne’s stare could have split Marten down the middle.
“Tovarich,” Kovalenko said, mildly amused at their spat. “It makes no difference who ordered it. The thinking behind it was tactical. Fire up the insurgency through the army’s brutal repression of it. Slaughter or terrify anything that moves, and do it theatrically. Men, women, children, the elderly, even animals. Burn them alive if you can. It brings the rebels together with astonishing fervor. Word of it would give the insurgents sympathy from the outside. If the world were to—”
“Burn them alive?” Marten cut him off sharply. “You’ve seen the CIA briefing video.”
“True.” Kovalenko nodded. “Haupkommissar Franck worked both sides of the fence at the same time, for us and for the CIA. We knew, of course. So while he watched us, we watched him. The minute he learned that the priest killed in Equatorial Guinea was Theo Haas’s brother, he requested the video briefings and began viewing them. The transmissions were simple enough for us to intercept and copy. I must tell you in all candor that we, too, were appalled by what we saw and what General Mariano was able to carry out so efficiently. Yes, we could leak the video, but who knows if blogs or other Internet aficionados don’t already have it in hand? So why not let one of them take credit and keep us out of it. Besides, even if the video is never released, Tiombe’s reign is nearly ended. Abba’s rebel forces are too strong and impassioned for him to survive.”
Marten stared at Kovalenko. What the hell was so important in Equatorial Guinea that it would make White recruit someone like General Mariano and at the same time draw the attention of both the CIA and Russian intelligence, or whoever Kovalenko was working for—which was something he had never been able to find out, not even years before when their lives had been so profoundly intertwined.
Oil, as he had thought earlier?
Maybe. But oil was being found almost everywhere in West Africa, so that in itself it didn’t seem enough to warrant attention like this. There had to be something more. Something else.
“You are puzzled, tovarich,” Kovalenko said. “You would like some explanation as to what all this is centered on.”
“Yes.”
Kovalenko gestured with the Glock. “I think Ms. Tidrow might enlighten you. In this case I would believe what she tells you.” He looked at Anne and smiled gently. “It’s alright, you can tell him. We know.”
Anne’s eyes locked on Kovalenko’s. There was no doubt at all that he did know and that Moscow knew, so there was no point in keeping it from Marten, not now.
“In that case, I will,” she said and turned to him. “A little more than a year ago Striker engineers discovered a massive oil reserve beneath the one we were already drilling. It’s huge, probably fifty times bigger than the entire Saudi field, comparable in size to the North American Great Lakes, with a refining capacity of more than six million barrels a day, or roughly four times that of the Saudis. It’s large enough to supply oil to three-quarters of the world for the next century.
“As soon as the find was confirmed, Sy Wirth called a meeting at Striker’s Houston headquarters. Loyal Truex was there representing Hadrian as Striker’s top security contractor. So was I and a handful of others, including Arnold Moss, our chief counsel. The general consensus was that the find was worth billions, if not trillions. But there was something else—it could be an enormously strategic energy supply for the United States, freeing us from any reliance at all on OPEC. Truex warned that it wouldn’t be long before the CIA learned about it and did something to bring their protective influence to bear.” Anne glanced at Kovalenko as if to say, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. Immediately she looked back to Marten.
“He meant it was important for us to take the first step and get them on board right away. Sy didn’t like it at all. He wanted no part of government interference on any level and said it was Truex’s job, not the CIA’s, to guard the find. The meeting ended on that note. As chairman and CEO of a closely held company like Striker he all but controls the board of directors and whatever else happens in the company. So if he wanted the find kept inside the company, it would have been. But now it seems clear the CIA was made aware of it anyway, maybe by Sy himself at some point, or Truex, I don’t know. Who did it and when doesn’t make any difference. The fact is the Agency is apparently doing everything it can to take command of the situation, including the retrieval of the photographs.” Again Anne looked at Kovalenko. “How Moscow found out, I don’t know either.”
Marten was dumbstruck. So it was oil, an ocean of it.
“That’s why no operatives from the Equatorial Guinean army followed me from Malabo,” he mused out loud. “They were under Mariano’s control and on the same side as SimCo, so they let Conor White do it instead.” Suddenly he pushed back from the computer console and stood up.
His eyes went from Anne to Kovalenko, and then he looked away, trying to put it all together, to shape it into some coherent whole. Finally he stood and crossed the room to stand with his back to them.
“Tiombe controlled everything for years. Took the profits from the pumped crude and built riches for himself and his family while letting the people wallow in poverty. Finally they got angry and started to make demands on the government with Abba as their leader. Tiombe didn’t like it and sent his troops in and the war began. Then Striker, already with leases in the area, had this massive find.” Abruptly he turned to face them.
“Why risk losing it to Tiombe, who might cancel the leases and throw them out of the country while he worked on a better deal with some bigger player?” Deliberately he looked to Kovalenko. “Maybe a country like China instead of a midlevel American oil company. Better to have the CIA in your pocket and help Abba. Send in Conor White and his mercenaries with armaments; become his friend and ally while at the same time secretly setting up Mariano on the other side to brutalize the army’s response, thereby firing up the rebels even more and, who, in turn, bring in hundreds more fighters.”
Marten came back across the room. His voice and manner, cold and cynical. “In two months or three or four, Tiombe is gone and Abba is in place, highly beholden to both SimCo and AG Striker. At White’s suggestion, and Abba’s agreement, the army will be dissolved, replaced by SimCo mercenaries, who will begin to mold Abba’s ragged fighters into a national police force. Another couple of months and the people start to share in the oil wealth so long denied them. A little of it, anyway, but much more than they ever would have had under Tiombe. Clean water starts to flow. New roads, hospitals, decent housing, and schools are announced. A few months later construction begins. Then the big find is revealed, with the geologic details provided for authentication. Once that happens the shock wave will be enormous, politically, economically, and emotionally, as the West, especially, breathes a collective sigh of relief. Right?”
Kovalenko nodded. “And no outsider can touch it—not Shell, not Exxon/Mobil, not Rus sia, not China, not anyone—because Equatorial Guinea is a sovereign nation and because no one can compete with the power that much oil will bring. Overnight, tiny, poverty-stricken Equatorial Guinea will become the paradigm for a modern, peaceful, very successful third world country.
“The catch is that no matter what the public perceives, in essence, the country, its leaders, its army, its grateful population, and its biblical sea of petroleum will be owned not by its inhabitants but by Striker Oil, and will continue to be owned by it for the next hundred or more years.”
Marten looked to Anne. “Is that what your father had in mind for the company’s future? Fiscal growth through slaughter. Expansion by flamethrower.”
Anne’s eyes, her entire being, suddenly turned to fire. “You son-of-a-bitch bastard,” she hissed.
“I simply asked you a question.”
“No,” she snapped. “It’s not what my father had in mind!”
“The world changes, tovarich,” Kovalenko interrupted, “and not always for the better.” Immediately he stood up. “Time is short and I must leave. You have come a long and perilous way for the photographs, and so you may have them. I will take the memory card.” Again he gestured with the Glock. “Would you please remove it from the computer and hand it to me?”
Marten looked at the gun. “If that’s what you want, that’s what you get,” he said flatly, then went to Jacob Cádiz’s desk, leaned in, and popped the memory card from the external port that rested on top of the CPU unit. He glanced at Anne, then looked at Kovalenko.
“Maybe you’d like it better if I put i
t in the envelope it came in.” Marten’s tone was acidic, even sardonic. “Make it neat and tidy and easy to carry so you won’t lose it.”
“Thank you, tovarich. You are most considerate.”
Marten shuffled through the pile of photographs, found the letter-sized envelope the memory card had been in, and dropped the card into it. Folding it, he snapped an elastic band around it and handed it to the Russian. “Sealed with a kiss,” he said.
Kovalenko smiled broadly and stuffed it into his pocket. “As always, it was good to see you, tovarich. Though too many years have passed. Your dear sister, Rebecca, is well and still in Switzerland?”
“Yes.”
“Give her my regards. Perhaps one day we will all holiday together.”
With a nod at Anne, Kovalenko started for the door.
“One more thing, tovarich,” Marten called after him. “Why did you kill the Hauptkommissar when you could have strung him along for years longer?” Kovalenko turned back, the Glock still in his hand. “You had an unknowing mole in both the CIA and the Berlin police,” Marten said. “He would have continued to be of immense value.”
“Once we had the photographs he was to kill you and Ms. Tidrow,” Kovalenko said quietly. “It was his assignment. It would have been bad manners for me to let that happen. Don’t you agree?”
Abruptly he slid the Glock into his belt, then took Franck’s Heckler & Koch machine gun from his shoulder and leveled it at them. Marten’s eyes went to it; so did Anne’s.
“So you do it, instead of him,” Marten said coldly. “Then everyone’s out of the picture.”
“After all we have been through together, tovarich? You embarrass me with your distrust.” The roundish, bearded Russian gave a great teddy bear grin. “What I think is that you will have trouble still. Especially from this Conor White. More so now that the photographs are in your possession.” Immediately his free hand went to his belt. He lifted the Glock from it and tossed it to Marten, then slid an ammunition clip from his jacket pocket and flipped it to him as well. “Fifteen-round magazine. A similar magazine is in the pistol, except that one round has been used. It means you have twenty-nine shots left.” He paused and let his eyes go to Anne; then they came back to Marten. “Your rental car—four-door silver Opel Astra, license plate number 93-AA-71. The Portuguese police have that information.”
