by Allan Folsom
Suddenly Anne picked up the tempo; with it came a series of powerful cries, nearly shouts. One after the other after the other. She was coming to orgasm in a way he’d never seen or heard or been part of, even with what they’d gone through in the last hours. She rode up and down the full length of him, again and again and again. Her breathing grew deeper, her cries unworldly. Then, with one final storm of thrusts, she let go a resounding wail and collapsed on top of him. To lie there in the dark, gasping and soaked with sweat.
For a long time he did nothing but lie beneath her, his arms around her, letting her recover. “Are you alright?” he whispered finally.
She gave no reply. Seconds passed, and he wondered if she had exhausted herself and fallen asleep. Then suddenly she let out a muffled sob, rolled off him, and got up, moving back away from the bed in the dark.
“What is it?” he said in concern and surprise.
Silence.
He sat up. “What is it?” he said again.
“Don’t!”
He could just see the wild starkness of her eyes as she shook her head and moved farther back, climbing into an overstuffed chair in the corner and cowering there, still naked, like some fearful animal. Then the crying began. Tears and quiet sobs at first, followed by a torrent of both, louder and far more pronounced.
He got out of bed and came toward her. “What’s wrong?” he asked tenderly. Her only response was a continuing rain of tears that were interspersed with wrenching sobs.
Marten was as much dismayed as he was concerned. This was something he never would have imagined, let alone expected—a strong, vibrant woman like she was suddenly coming apart in front of him.
“What is it? What’s going on?” he pressed gently. “Tell me. Let me help.”
“Fuck you!”
The crying and sobbing kept on. She was about as close to hysteria as anyone could get.
He crossed the room and found her robe, then came back and put it over her as best he could. She didn’t seem to notice. He went to the closet, found a robe for himself, and pulled it on. Then he took a straight-backed chair, turned it around, and sat down close to her, watching her. He wanted to intercede, to help, but he knew it would do no good. Ten minutes passed. Nothing changed. He wanted to turn on a light but was afraid of how she might react.
Ten minutes more, then twenty. A car went by outside, its lights momentarily reflecting off the ceiling and letting him see her. She was still hunched in the chair, the robe over her, crying inconsolably.
“It all has to do with why you went out, doesn’t it?” he said. “What were you doing? What happened?”
There was no reply. Just tears and wrenching emotion.
“If you didn’t want me to know, you wouldn’t have come back.”
Still there was no response.
A few minutes more and the crying slowed and then stopped. “My purse,” she murmured softly. “It’s on the chair by the bed.”
“I can’t see what I’m doing. I need to turn on a light. Is that alright?”
“Yes.”
Marten got up, crossed to a lamp next to the bed, and switched it on. The room filled with a dim, warm glow. Then he found the purse.
“Open it,” she said. “There’s a zipper pocket just inside, near the top.”
“What’s in it?”
“You’ll see.”
Marten opened the purse and found the zipper, then pulled it open. Inside the pocket was a single item. A drugstore-type film processing envelope.
“This?”
“Yes.”
He opened it. Inside were several strips of processed 35 mm film. He looked at her, puzzled. Her eyes were red. What little makeup she wore had been streaked by rivulets of tears.
“In the bottom of the purse . . .” she said hesitantly, “is something I’ve . . . kept with me . . . ever since I . . . left the Agency. It was habit . . . The old . . . spymaster special. A 35 mm Minox camera. When . . . we . . . crossed . . . the city, the shops I . . . kept going into . . . I was . . . looking for a place that had . . . photo-developing service. I found one in the . . . Baixa district. One hour or less . . . just like . . . at home . . . Open till midnight . . . seven days a . . . week.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will.” Deliberately she reached up and wiped her eyes with the palms of her hands. “Go into the . . . bathroom . . . turn on the light over the sink and . . . and hold the strips up to . . . it. Don’t look . . . for pictures. There are . . . none . . . Only . . . words.”
96
Marten entered the bathroom. The Glock was still on the marble ledge just above the Jacuzzi tub where he’d left it. He crossed to the sink and turned on the light above it, then opened the envelope and carefully held the first strip up to it. It was hard to see what had been photographed. It looked like the page of a document, but he couldn’t read it without some kind of magnification.
“It’s page one of three.” Anne stood in the doorway, the robe pulled around her. In the brighter light she was pale and seemed wholly spent.
“Come over here and sit down, please,” he said gently and touched the edge of the tub.
“ ‘Top Secret—XARAK Protocol’ is the first line.” She stayed in the doorway where she was. “The next follows beneath it. ‘Central Intelligence Agency, Washington, D.C. Subject: Memorandum of Understanding or MOU. For: President/CEO and General Counsel for AG Striker Oil and Energy Company; and for Chairman, President, and General Counsel for Hadrian Worldwide. From: Deputy Director, Central Intelligence Agency. Via: Director, National Clandestine Service. The General Counsel—CIA Office of General Counsel. Reference: NSCID-19470; EO-13318; CIA Operational Targeting Authority 1A.’
“It’s all there, Nicholas. Everything that happened in Equatorial Guinea since the plan for the Bioko field was orchestrated by the Agency. I’ll give you more. I memorized most of it as I photographed the pages. Memorization. I was trained in it. The way you memorized poems or the Gettysburg Address or the Preamble to the Constitution when you were in school.
“One,” she continued. “Based on direct, as well as implied, National Security tasking authorities stipulated in REFs, and in accordance with the Letter of Instruction (LOI) submitted separately from the Deputy Director of the CIA (DD/CIA), the General Counsel has prepared a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) among the so-named trilateral participants in paragraph three. This MOU describes an ambitious plan to secure unimpeded drilling access and petroleum exploitation rights for the USA in the West African country of Equatorial Guinea. This initiative is part of a broader national imperative to achieve energy independence from other global sources of crude oil.
“Two: This document, upon affixation of signatures of the principals (named by position below) and courier-delivery to CIA Headquarters by Agency Security Officers, does constitute an active and legally binding accord for the two corporate entities under penalties heretofore separately specified by the Office of the Attorney General, the Internal Revenue Service, and other ancillary judicial instruments employable at the Agency’s discretion.” Anne stopped. “That’s just the first part. The rest is the same, all concise and neatly spelled out. Congressman Ryder will love it.”
Marten put the strips back into the envelope. “How did you get it?” He was incredulous.
“It’s why I needed an Internet connection and a large-screen TV. It was something I asked about at the hotel on our way here when I told you I had to pee. The hotel you were smart enough to go back to. The one where Conor White tracked me, because of my credit card, I’m sure. I knew they would be watching everything but it’s all I had.
“I couldn’t very well have photographed the screen on my BlackBerry, it’s too small. Nor could I download the document or make an electronic copy of it because they would know immediately that the site had been accessed and a copy had been made. Immediately they would attempt to trace the intruder. But by photographing it the old-fashioned way, bringing the page
s up one by one, and clicking off each with the Minox, then, at the end, simply turning off the television, you see?” For a moment her voice drifted off and she seemed to forget what she was talking about; then she came back. “They would probably know the site had been accessed, but there would be no evidence it had been compromised and nowhere to look for the hacker.”
Marten was astounded. “That site has to be highly classified. How did you get into it? You would need a myriad of codes and passwords.”
“I was in the Agency for a long time, Nicholas. I know a few procedures. I also sit on Striker’s board of directors. Not long ago I sat on Hadrian’s board as well.”
“Hadrian’s?”
“Yes. I know both companies intimately. Codes, passwords. Some I had to work my way around, but in the end I had a basis for it all.”
“Since when do boards of directors have access to a company’s classified codes and passwords?”
Anne smiled faintly and ran a hand through her hair. “I told you before I had been married twice. I didn’t say to who. My first husband was Loyal Truex, founder and president of Hadrian. My second was Sy Wirth, chairman of Striker. We shared a lot of things for a lot of reasons. Like most couples do.”
“Jesus, Anne.” Marten felt the air go out of him.
“I knew when Erlanger warned me on the airstrip, and then with Franck and the other CIA people getting involved, there had to be more to it than just the photographs . . . So I looked for it . . . and . . . found it.” Suddenly the tears welled up again. “What I’ve done . . . is . . . betray the Agency, my country, my father, and myself. Striker Oil is . . . finished. Probably I am, too . . .”
Again she used the palms of her hands to wipe away the tears. “The thing is . . . that contract, that memorandum, belongs in the hands of Joe Ryder. He has the right to know about it and should know about it. When he has it he will act accordingly through the proper channels. Whatever else it does, the CIA cannot have its own foreign policy. Especially when the result is the horrifying deaths of all those people.” Her eyes found Marten’s and for a long moment held there. “I did it because it was the right thing to do . . . I didn’t mean to hurt you or frighten you or use you . . . Now . . . I’m . . . very . . . tired. I would like to . . . no, I need to . . . sleep . . . Please . . . excuse me.”
Marten found a piece of paper and made a note for himself, then folded it and put it in his pocket. He waited several minutes more, giving Anne the time and privacy to settle herself. Finally he picked up the Glock and the envelope with the 35 mm negatives and went into the bedroom.
The lamp was still on, and he could see her on the far side of the bed, under the covers with her back to him. He glanced at the clock: 3:32 A.M.
Immediately he went to the closet, punched in the combination to the safe, waited as the electronic locks slid back, then opened the door and put the envelope inside next to the photographs and the camera’s memory card. For the briefest moment he studied them all, then closed the door, listening as the electronic locks engaged. Seconds later, he set the Glock on the bedside table and turned off the light, then took off his robe and slid into bed next to her. Ever so gently he leaned over, kissed her lightly, then pulled the covers up around her and lay back in the dark, wholly drained by one of the longest days of his life. All he wanted was sleep.
Instead thoughts crept in, one overlapping another as he tried to understand what had happened. Anne’s sudden fragility, her tears and runaway emotion, reminded him of the tragic breakdown of his sister, Rebecca, years earlier when, as a child, she had seen their adoptive parents shot to death by intruders in their California home. By the time neighbors and the police found her she was on the edge of complete hysteria. Shortly afterward she had gone into deep shock, retreating into a heartbreaking world of silence where she could neither speak nor hear. Institutionalized, she had remained that way for years until another monstrously traumatic incident brought her out of it.
The stark memories of her ordeal made him recall what Anne had told him in Berlin. “My mother got very sick when I was three. She was in the hospital for a month. She didn’t recognize me or my father. Nobody knew what was wrong. Finally she came out of it. The experience scared the hell out of me. It did the same to my father. I was very young, but I could see it. I wanted so much to help him, but I couldn’t.”
Then: “My mother died when I was thirteen. It was brain cancer. She didn’t live long, but it was awful for her and my dad. Like the first time, he tried to protect me from it while he was falling apart himself. How he kept everything together—me, himself, the company—I don’t know.”
Marten’s experience with Rebecca had brought him into close contact with any number of mental health professionals. Transposing what he had learned then to Anne’s behavior tonight made him think that the seeds of it might well have been planted when she was a child. With no siblings to comfort her, her only escape would have been to hide her own emotions and focus on concern for her father. The same thing played out years later when he lay dying after a series of strokes. Again she would have put her own feelings aside in favor of his. By then it would have become a way of life; the outwardly strong, confident woman, routinely dealing with profoundly troubling issues by not dealing with them at all and instead burying them deep inside her. Shift that behavior to the present, where she faced a colossal runaway train: the Bioko field, the Striker/Hadrian corruption situation in Iraq, the Ryder Commission’s probe into it, Conor White and the creation of SimCo—involving both of her ex-husbands, no less; the photographs; the CIA video; Erlanger’s warning; the growing suspicion that the CIA was involved with Striker and Hadrian in fueling the civil war; all but confirming it, the arrival of Franck and Kovalenko in Praia da Rocha in search of the pictures and the realization that Franck was a CIA operative.
She’d been a professional, so suspicion alone wasn’t enough. She left him and went to the hotel and did what she’d been trained to do, obtain proof. Once she’d hacked into the Agency files and discovered the memorandum, she would have suddenly realized she was standing on a moral precipice. Either turn away and forget she ever saw it or risk losing her father’s company, the Bioko field, and maybe her life by photographing it, then having the film developed and giving it to Joe Ryder. Boldly, she’d chosen the latter and returned to the apartment to hand the negatives over to Marten for safekeeping alongside the photographs.
Then she’d had second thoughts. Maybe even third, fourth, and fifth thoughts. Physically exhausted, emotionally overwhelmed, she robotically reverted to the old ways, burying her feelings and focusing on something else. In this case a wild orgy of sex with him, thinking, hoping, maybe even praying it would give her sufficient release to make her clearheaded enough to destroy the negatives and perhaps the photographs, too. But it hadn’t worked; roaring and retching, a hurricane of long-buried emotions flooded out, and she came apart. Finally she was spent enough and raw enough to find the courage to do what she thought was right and give him the negatives, telling him nearly word for word what the memorandum contained. After that the only thing left was sleep.
Whether any or all of his analysis was right, there was no way to know, but putting things together the way he had along with memories of what his sister experienced, what had happened made sense. All they could do now was stay where they were and wait until Joe Ryder arrived in Lisbon and contacted them. Then they would go from there.
Again Marten looked at the clock: 3:51 A.M.
He closed his eyes and finally, mercifully, fell asleep.
3:53 A.M.
They spoke in Portuguese.
“Which floor?”
“The top one, I think. I walked around to the back. There was only one light on in the building, and it was up there. It went out about twenty minutes ago. The woman entered around midnight, the man about an hour later.”
“You’re certain it was them.” Carlos Branco stood in the darkened park across the street from the buildi
ng at 17 Rua do Almada, a fisherman’s cap on his head, his jacket collar turned up against the lightly falling drizzle. The woman with him was maybe twenty. Her dark, short-cropped hair, light pullover jacket, and jeans were soaked through. She’d been outside for a long time.
“I’m certain it’s her,” she said. “I followed her from the Baixa. The man—I’m not positive it was him. I only saw him from the park, but he pretty much fit the description I was given.”
“You did well.”
“I know.”
Branco took her hand and put five one-hundred-euro bills into it. “Go home and go to bed. You were never here.”
He watched her walk off in the dark, then pass under a street-lamp and then fade again into the night. He looked back, then slid a night-vision scope from his jacket and trained it on the top floor. Even in its green glow, he saw only darkness.
3:58 A.M.
97
4:32 A.M.
Its headlights out, the gray BMW rolled to a stop on the far side of the park across from Rua do Almada. Seconds later a figure moved out of the dark, opened the rear door, and slid in beside Conor White.
“Number 17, top floor,” Carlos Branco said.
“You’re certain it’s them?”
“The woman, yes. The man, not positive, but I would bet it’s Marten. There’s a narrow alley at the back and a rear entrance. I have a man there watching. No one’s come out. My guess is they’re sleeping. The door lock’s easy to crack. You want to go in, now is the time.”
White looked to Irish Jack at the wheel and Patrice beside him. “Jack, take us around back and down the alley, lights out.”
“Colonel,” Branco warned. “This needs to be done very quickly. Afterward go directly to your plane and get out of the country. Right then, right away.”
