by Allan Folsom
There were a dozen eight-by-ten photographs. Eleven were cheesecake photos of naked women in various pornographic poses. The twelfth was of Sy Wirth himself, the official corporate photograph of Striker’s chairman standing alongside the company logo in the lobby of its Houston headquarters.
Apart from the photographs were two letter-sized envelopes. Enraged, Wirth ripped open the first and took out a small, thin rectangle, the size of a digital camera memory card. The trouble was, it was no memory card but a tourist trinket, a refrigerator magnet. Printed on the front in bright, happy red letters was the phrase FOND MEMORIES OF FARO, PORTUGAL.
“Fucking Russian cocksucker,” Wirth breathed, his face as crimson as the letters on the magnet. Immediately he picked up the second envelope. Angrily he ripped it opened and looked inside. White could see the color drain from his face.
Slowly Wirth turned the envelope upside down and a half-dozen or more torn pieces of paper fell onto the tabletop, landing among the cheesecake photographs, his official Striker portrait, and the Faro refrigerator magnet. White had no idea what it was. Sy Wirth had known instantly. It was what was left of the agreement for the massive Andean gas field, the Magellan/Santa Cruz–Tarija, he had given to Dimitri Korostin at the Dorchester Hotel in London in exchange for finding and returning the photographs and the memory card.
“What is it?” Conor White was staring at him.
Wirth’s eyes came up to meet his. “I thought I was dealing with a friend. I wasn’t.”
“You said something about a Russian. What did you mean?”
Wirth glared at him. “I said nothing about a Russian. Nothing at all.”
“Are the Russians involved?” This time White didn’t hold back anything. “Is that what happened?”
Wirth didn’t reply.
“Do they have the photographs?”
“I don’t know.”
Suddenly Conor White’s vast experience and education—at Eton, Oxford, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, his long career as a frontline British combat officer and then a top-level professional mercenary soldier—came fully into play. Wirth’s blundering had struck an immediate and terrifying chord, the stakes of which, even moments earlier, he could never have imagined.
“Mr. Wirth,” he said emphatically, “I suggest you try to reach Anne and find out where she is. If she’s with Marten, if she’s not. Maybe she’ll answer, maybe she won’t. But if we can find out what happened, we may well learn something about the rest of it. In the meantime one of us needs to call Loyal Truex and tell him what the hell’s going on. God help us if the Russians have the photographs, because if they do they will have all the evidence they need to prove what they may have already guessed about what Striker is doing in Bioko.
“We’re talking about a massive amount of oil, Mr. Wirth. Massive. They will want it, all of it, if for no other reason than to keep it out the hands of the West. Once they start formulating a plan and communicating between themselves, the Chinese will find out. And they will want it, too. Either or both will create some kind of excuse for an armed intervention into the insurrection, basically to get hold of the country for themselves. They do that and it will be seen as a bona fide threat to U.S. national security, and Washington will have no choice but to try and stop them.” White paused as a chilling apocalyptic anger raged through him. “You might have damn well planted the seeds for a major war, Mr. Wirth. Major.”
3:08 P.M.
77
3:34 P.M.
Stump Logan turned the battered green-and-white 1978 Volkswagen bus onto the A2, the Auto-estrada do Sul, and headed toward Lisbon, by now less than a hundred miles to the north. Logan had reasoned that it was best they get out of not only Praia da Rocha but the whole Algarve region before Hauptkommissar Franck’s body was found. Fortunately it was Sunday afternoon, and hundreds of people would be leaving the beach communities for the trip back to the cities, Lisbon especially. So he left his employees to watch the store, packed up everyone pretty much on the spot, and joined the traffic exodus heading north out of the Algarve.
“Packed up everyone” was an all-inclusive term. By that Logan meant himself, Anne and Marten, and his five dogs, which for all intents were his family. Two sat in the shotgun seat next to him; a white Westie and a golden retriever/poodle mix. Behind him, on the floor between Anne and Marten and the large envelope Marten so carefully guarded, was Bruno, a coal black 130-pound two-year-old Newfoundland who affectionately rested his not so inconsiderable head in Marten’s lap. The last of the five were an aging Old English sheepdog called Bowler, who kept to open space behind the seats where Anne and Marten sat, and Leo, a young, frisky eighty-pound Bouvier des Flandres, whose self-appointed duty seemed to be a constant patrol between Anne and Marten and Bruno, and Bowler behind them.
3:40 P.M.
Anne heard her BlackBerry ring for the fourth time in the last half hour. The previous three had been from the same number—Sy Wirth’s BlackBerry—and she simply hadn’t answered. Each time she’d drawn a look from Marten, but he’d made no comment. The latest call was again from Wirth; this time it was a text message.
Anne. Sy. Very concerned about your safety. I’ve tried calling with no luck. Where are you? Are you alright? Extremely important I speak with you. Please get in touch immediately.
She looked at Marten and showed him the screen. “He’s the one who called before. I didn’t answer because I knew who it was. He’s the last person I want a conversation with.”
“But this time you clicked on.”
“I knew it was text. I wanted to see what he said.”
“Can he find you because of it?” Marten said.
“No. I switched off the GPS feature from the application settings before I left Paris. If I wanted them to know where I was, I wanted to be the one who told them.”
“Do you know where Wirth is now?”
She shook her head. “I tried earlier, but it didn’t work. So I imagine he did the same thing.”
Just then Leo, the Bouvier, poked his head over Bruno’s head, which was still parked in Marten’s lap, and looked up at him, seemingly intent on knowing what was going on.
“Fellas, it’s getting crowded. Go play somewhere else, huh?” Marten said and pushed both dogs away. As he did, he felt the press of the Glock automatic Kovalenko had given him, which he’d tucked into his waistband under his jacket before they left Cádiz’s house. He glanced at Stump Logan at the wheel, then looked to Anne and lowered his voice. “Wirth will know we landed at Faro. By now he’s getting desperate, wondering what happened after that. It’s why he’s trying to reach you, hoping you’ll tip your hand. I think we have to assume White and this Patrice and probably the other fellow, Irish Jack, are with him.”
“Police!” Stump Logan warned suddenly. Marten looked up to see the bookseller’s eyes glued to the rearview mirror. Both he and Anne turned to look behind them and saw two helmeted, uniformed police on the motorcycles coming up fast.
“Relax and watch your speed,” Marten said evenly, then turned to innocently ruffle Bruno’s head, an everyday dog lover stroking man’s best friend. Anne eased around, then looked over at Marten and smiled as if she were enjoying his interplay with the dog.
Seconds later the police were abreast of them, one on either side. The rider on the left glanced in as he rode. The rider on the right did the same. It went on that way for what seemed an eternity. Finally Marten looked over and nodded politely at the rider on the right. In the next instant and almost as one, they accelerated off to disappear in the flow of traffic ahead.
Logan looked in the mirror. “Lucky,” he said, “very lucky.” Then he clipped on the headset to an iPod he had next to him, tuned in to something, and drove on.
Anne and Marten exchanged glances but said nothing. The police might have sped off, but their sudden arrival and close scrutiny were deeply troubling. There was no way to know if Franck’s body had been found and if the authorities were already looking f
or them, the motorcycle officers part of a much larger dragnet. Even if they weren’t, it was only a matter of time before it happened. What made it worse, and Marten hadn’t even thought about it until now, was that the Glock Kovalenko had given him was the weapon used to kill the Hauptkommissar. Not only did he have it on his person, with the lone fatal shot fired from the otherwise full magazine, his fingerprints were all over it.
And then there was Sy Wirth. Wherever he was when he had tried to reach Anne—surely Faro, maybe even Praia da Rocha—he was too close. That Conor White and his mercenaries would be with him exacerbated an already highly dangerous situation because of their reach and connections and deadly expertise. He had only to remember what had happened to Marita and her medical students outside of Madrid to remind him what kind of people they were.
What had President Harris said about the CIA station chief in Lisbon? That he would know Joe Ryder was coming—
“But that’s all he knows. Ryder will be under the protection of the State Department’s regional security office, the RSO. They’ll coordinate his movements, but they won’t know about you or Ms. Tidrow.”
Maybe not, unless White was CIA. If he was, it wouldn’t take much for him to learn that Ryder had abruptly left Iraq and was on his way to Lisbon and to find out where he would be staying when he arrived and then realize why he was going there. If that happened, things would get a lot darker. And quickly.
Suddenly something large and black appeared in front of Marten and he was shoved back hard against his seat. The next instant brought a nauseating wave of hot doggie breath. Bruno had suddenly leapt up, throwing both forepaws against Marten’s chest, knocking him backward and holding him there. Now his large, drooly face was inches from Marten’s and he was staring at him with a look of deep sympathy, as if somehow he had sensed the fear and turmoil going on inside him and had determined to share his concern.
“Thanks, buddy, you’re a real pal,” Marten said gratefully, then lifted the Newfoundland’s big paws and eased him back to the floor. Afterward, he patted him gently on the head. “If I was going home I’d ask Stump if I could take you with me. Unfortunately, I’ve got other things to do first.”
3:48 P.M.
78
LISBON. STILL SUNDAY, JUNE 6. 5:12 P.M.
They came in on the A2 Auto-estrada, passing the towns of Palmela, Fernão Ferro, and then Almada on the southern bank of the Tagus River. Then, still in a crush of heavy traffic, they were across the towering 25th of April Bridge—an edifice that was a near replica of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge—and into the city, staying on the main highway, Avenida da Ponte.
Marten leaned forward to talk to Stump Logan. “We’re looking for the Bairro Alto section. Rua do—”
Instantly Logan put up a hand for silence, then yanked off his iPod headset. “Don’t,” he said sharply, looking at Marten in the mirror. “I don’t want to know, period. Area, street address, who you’re meeting. Nothing at all.” With that he slipped the headset back on and drove on in silence.
Four or five miles later he took an exit near the Zoological Gardens, then turned left and then right onto Rua Professor Lima Basto. Another twenty yards and he pulled to the curb and stopped.
“Down there and around the corner”—he pointed a finger at the windshield—“is Terminal Rodoviário de Lisboa, a central bus terminal where the motor coaches from the Algarve come in. Get out and walk to it; go in from the coach entrance and then out the front door. Nobody will stop you, unless by now the police have the German policeman’s body and your faces are plastered all over. If they do, you’re as good as dead anyway. But if they don’t and somebody sees you and remembers you later, they’ll think you came into the city by bus. The police come to me afterward and ask if I was in Lisbon, I’ll tell them yes, I was, I had to pick up some books from a fellow used-book storekeeper—which I will do before I leave. Unless we had plain bad luck with those motorcycle cops, there’ll be no way they can prove I drove you here. All I can tell them is that you were in my store looking for a Jacob Cádiz and that you came back later looking for my help in getting out of the city. To where, you didn’t say. I told you there was nothing I could do. You left, and that was the last I saw of you.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Marten said.
“Good. Now, if you don’t mind, I have some books to pick up before I head home.”
They left it that way, with Anne and Marten on the street and Stump Logan and his dogs driving off in his thirty-odd-year-old VW bus, having wished them good luck and saying he was glad to have been of service.
Marten glanced around, then started them quickly down the sidewalk toward the bus terminal.
“This Bairro Alto section that you asked Logan about,” Anne said. “You know where it is?”
“No, we’re going to have to find it. Get a street map or something.”
“What’s there?”
“A safe house.”
“Safe house?”
“Yes.”
“And then tomorrow a meeting with Joe Ryder.”
“Yes.”
“The ‘old girlfriend’ you were on the phone with in Logan’s office. She set it up.”
Marten nodded.
“Who the hell is she that she can orchestrate all this?”
“Just a friend.”
“No, not just a friend. Someone who can pull top-level strings, and quickly. Things like this don’t just happen.”
Marten glanced around again, watching the traffic, looking for police.
“Who are you really, Mr. Nicholas Marten? Who do you work for?”
“Fitzsimmons and Justice. Landscape architects. Manchester, England.”
“That’s not a good enough answer.”
“For now it will have to do.”
5:20 P.M.
79
FOUR SEASONS HOTEL RITZ LISBON,
RUA RODRIGO DA FONSECA. SAME TIME.
CIA Chief of Station (COS)/Lisbon Jeremy Moyer worked Sundays when he had to, and this Sunday was one of them. Four and a half hours earlier he’d taken a call at home from Newhan Black, deputy director of the CIA, asking him to go into the embassy and pull up a file on a case officer named Fernando Coelho and when he had it to call him back right away.
What it meant was “Go to the office immediately and call me back over a secure line.” Clearly whatever Black wanted to discuss on this summer Sunday afternoon—one o’clock in Lisbon, eight in the morning at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia—was urgent.
Twenty minutes later Moyer was in his private office, door locked, secure phone in hand. When they established contact Newhan Black’s first words were: “I’m not going to tell you everything that’s going on, and it’s probably better that you don’t know. But this is what I want done.”
Now, at nearly five thirty in the afternoon, Moyer sat at a small cocktail table in the Ritz Bar sipping a Dubonnet on ice and chatting with forty-year-old Debra Wynn. Wynn was chief of the U.S. State Department’s Regional Security Office and, like Moyer, based in the U.S. Embassy/Lisbon. She was responsible for coordinating all security for the embassy, visiting guests, and dignitaries. In this case they had a CODEL, a congressional delegation, in the person of Congressman Joe Ryder of New York, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, coming into the country.
“What I would like, Debra, is to go over the Ryder situation.” Fifty-one-year-old Moyer fit well into the hotel’s posh surroundings—neatly trimmed graying hair, navy blazer, pin-striped shirt open at the neck, khaki trousers, oxblood loafers—one embassy official having drinks with another at the hotel where an important U.S. politician was due to arrive the next day. “The congressman, coming here as he is, makes him a very high-profile target. That he’s passing through on his way back from Iraq doesn’t help. As you know, I would have preferred to have him stay at the embassy.”
Wynn looked at Moyer directly. She was handsome and athletic, a twenty-year State Department
veteran who’d come up through the ranks, as Moyer had. The difference was, her personality was far more guarded. While he drank Dubonnet, she chose iced tea. “The choice of where to stay was his,” she said.
“I know. And it’s why I came here, to look around for myself and to offer you some assistance.”
“You think he needs it?”
Moyer took a sip of the Dubonnet and used the government-employee-speak of someone more senior in rank than the person being addressed. “I hate to think what the result would be if something happened.”
In other words—what her career and life would look like if she had been offered CIA help in protecting Ryder and turned it down, and then, as Moyer said, something happened.
Wynn looked to the glass of iced tea on the cocktail table next to her, then picked it up and held it without drinking. “How many of your people should I expect?”
“One.”
“One?”
“Sometimes in one man you get ten.” Moyer smiled. “When are your people scheduled to secure the congressman’s room?”
“Tomorrow morning at seven.”
“My man will be there at six thirty. He is to be afforded freedom of movement. Your people will understand.”
“You mean he won’t be taking orders from us.”
Moyer nodded.
Debra Wynn smiled courteously. “Does he have a name?”
“Carlos Branco. But he will use another name then.”
“He’s a local. Portuguese.”
“Yes. You know him?”
“Just the name.”
“He’s been in the business for a long time. He knows the city and his way around it better than any of us, and the congressman will be visiting a number of venues before he has dinner with the mayor.” Moyer took another sip of the Dubonnet, then set the glass down and stood to leave. “One last thing. Ryder is used to RSO security, so let him think my man is one of yours. There’s no need to alarm him.”
“Is there a need for alarm?”
