Read The Hadrian Memorandum Online
Authors: Allan Folsom
12:12 A.M.
Banco Espirito Santo. Marten passed the bank building for the second time in the last twenty minutes and realized he was getting nowhere. He’d walked up and down the Baixa—Rua do Áurea, Rua Augusta, Rua dos Correeiros, Rua dos Fanqueiros, with others in between—to no avail. All he’d seen were several taxis, here and there a pedestrian, and darkened shops. Wherever Anne had gone after she’d left the Hotel Lisboa Chiado only she knew. The few other hotels he’d passed, the only public buildings still open and that she might have gone into, he’d ruled out because of the credit card situation and the risk of being seen himself.
Moreover, the police presence was heavy, which he knew it would be following the shootings. More than once he’d ducked into a doorway or around a corner as a patrol car passed. Luckily the rain kept the motorcycle units to a minimum, and there had been no foot patrol at all, at least that he’d seen. Meaning so far he’d been lucky, but how long that fortune would hold was, he knew, mostly up to him.
Finally he decided there was nothing more he could do about Anne. Her fate, like his, was in her own hands. The thing now was to try to get back to Raisa’s apartment and wait for Joe Ryder’s call. That meant a thirty-minute walk—through the Baixa, then up into the Chiado, and finally the Bairro Alto. A thirty-minute walk if he didn’t get lost. A lot more if he did. The longer he was out, the greater the chance of being stopped and questioned by the police. If that happened he was done, especially since he was still carrying the Glock automatic that had killed Hauptkommissar Franck and the two men in the Jaguar. A gun he could throw into any sewer opening or storm drain but didn’t dare in the event Conor White and his men showed up.
The rain came down steadily, and he pulled the umbrella close overhead. He turned right at the next corner and kept going. Now he realized he was walking toward the area where the shootings had taken place. There should be a way to circumvent it, but he didn’t know it. So he kept on, staying as much in shadows as he could.
He was wet and exhausted. The thought of the long walk back to the Bairro Alto was numbing, but he had no choice. So he kept on. Another block, then two. Somewhere along the way he began to think of the shootings themselves. Before, in the apartment in Berlin, he’d been nearly crushed by the fear of approaching police sirens. The next morning, he’d seen the television reports of the murders of Marita and her students and had a panic attack, losing control and physically assaulting Anne, blaming her for the killings. He nearly lost it again at the Bordeaux-Mérignac Airport when he’d been certain he had lost his edge and was no longer capable of surviving in a world of bloodshed and sudden death. But then had come the men in the Jaguar. Whatever security mechanisms that had been hounded into his psyche those years ago in the LAPD were still there. The gunmen had stepped from the car, and he’d done what he’d been trained to do. Shoot to kill in self-defense. Calmly, accurately. Then he’d walked away. There’d been no rapid heartbeat, no trembling hands, no indecision. Just swift, deadly action. And afterward no remorse at all. It was a thought that troubled him more than if he’d simply lost his nerve and run. What had Marita told him at the airport in Paris?
I think you’re one of those people trouble follows around
.
As much as he tried to escape it, blood and violent death seemed to hover over him like some predestined curse. How long before it reached critical mass and took him over completely, making him wholly mad and coldly murderous, the way he had been with the men in the Jaguar? How much longer before it finally finished the job and swallowed him up for good?
Six minutes later he started up Rua do Carmo toward Rua Garrett. Somewhere in front of him he heard the sound of an accordion. It grew louder as he approached. Finally, in the spill of a streetlight, he saw the man playing it. He was alone, sitting out of the rain on a small folding chair inside a doorway. He wore an old overcoat and a beret that was too small for his head and seemed completely unaware of the world around him. There was no way to guess his age or even his race. But none of it mattered. His soul was somewhere else, on a different plane and on a different journey than the world around him. Whatever song he was playing was unbearably sad but at the same time hauntingly beautiful. Marten wished he could pull up a chair beside him and sit there listening forever.
But he couldn’t.
So he passed him by in the rain and dark.
And walked on.
12:25 A.M.
12:30 A.M.
The gray BMW sped along Avenida Álvares Cabral, rounded the city park Jardim da Estrela, the Garden of the Star, and raced off down Avenida Infante Santo toward the harbor. With little or no traffic to slow them, Irish Jack kept the accelerator to the floor and an eye on the mirror looking for police coming up from behind. Patrice rode silently beside him, little more than a passenger himself. Conor White and Sy Wirth sat side by side in the seat behind them with Wirth staring silently into space.
“Carlos Branco’s found Anne.” White had brought the news when he’d joined them in the Ritz Bar.
“Where?” Wirth had been exuberant.
“A cheap hotel in Almada, across the 25th of April Bridge on the far side of the Tagus River. Branco thinks she’s waiting to meet someone.”
“Ryder?”
“Maybe. It’s probably why she went to the hotel. To contact him.”
“What about Marten?”
“He’s not with her. After the shooting he vanished. She’ll know where he is, or at least where they were staying before she went out on her own.”
“Why would she leave Marten behind to meet with Ryder alone?”
“You know her better than I do,” White said. “You tell me.”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
With that Wirth had finished his drink and they’d left, crossing the Ritz’s lobby and going out into the rain and dark, then walking up the block to meet Irish Jack waiting in the BMW.
_______
Streetlights and the occasional passing car alternated the shadows inside the BMW. Black to bright to white to silhouette to something in between. Wirth glanced at Conor White as if in an angry dream, then stared off as he had before.
“What are you thinking?” White asked quietly.
Wirth kept his eyes straight ahead. “I’m trying not to.”
12:35 A.M.
Irish Jack turned off Avenida Infante Santo and onto the freeway just above the Port of Lisbon docks. Seconds later he swung the car onto Rua Vieira da Silva, a shortcut to the cloverleaf that would take them onto Avenida da Ponte and then onto the 25th of April Bridge and across the Tagus River to Almada and the hotel where Anne was. Wirth was alert, excited. Conor White could see his mind working, his thoughts dancing all over.
A few seconds later White looked up to see Irish Jack watching him in the mirror; he nodded imperceptibly. For no apparent reason, the BMW slowed. Irish Jack pulled it to the curb and stopped. The area was a darkened neighborhood, a mix of apartment and commercial buildings and closed shops.
“What’s this?” Sy Wirth snapped.
“We need to set some ground rules before we get to Anne,” White said quietly.
“Rules? What rules? What the hell are you talking about?”
“You sent us after the Spanish doctor and her charges, Mr. Wirth. It was an unforgivable mistake. They didn’t know a thing about the photographs. Worse, much worse, you brought the Russians into this.”
“What are you getting at?”
“We have one last chance to get the pictures. I don’t want you involved in any way.”
Wirth was outraged. “Who are you to talk to me like that? I gave you an enormous contract. Gave you power and prestige and visibility you would never have gotten on your own in a million fucking years.” He jabbed an angry finger at Conor White. “And you know what, I can just as quickly take it all away. All of it. So fuck your ground rules and get going. Get to Anne.”
“Have a drink, Mr. Wirth. You’re going to need it.” Conor White lifted a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue from a pocket in the back of the front seat and opened it.
“I don’t want a drink.”
“Yes you do.” Patrice turned in the front seat to look at him. “Mr. Wirth.”
A chill crept down Wirth’s spine. Slowly he looked to Conor White. “What do you want?”
“I want you to have a drink and calm down and listen to what I have to say.” White held out the bottle.
Wirth looked at it. “I need a glass.”
“I’m afraid you don’t.”
Wirth stared at him, then suddenly and reached for the door handle.
“It’s locked, Mr. Wirth.” Conor White showed no emotion at all. “Just have the drink.”
Wirth’s eyes went to Patrice. Then to the mirror, where Irish Jack was staring at him. Again White offered the bottle. Finally Wirth took it and took a strong pull. Then he looked back to White. “I’ll ask you again—what do you want?”
“Maybe you could explain these.” White reached into the inner breast pocket of his jacket pocket and brought out two number 2 Ticonderoga 1388 pencils.
“They’re yours. I believe they go with this.” White slid several folded pages of a yellow legal pad from the same pocket, unfolded them, and laid them out on the seat between them. “Maybe this will help.” He clicked on a vanity light over the seat. “Your handwriting, Mr. Wirth,”
Wirth hesitated, then looked down to see the notes he’d made in the Gulfstream while he was flying over northern Spain in pursuit of Marten. Notes intended for a dialogue later that day with Arnold Moss.
1: Prepare to quickly and publicly disavow any connection to Conor White, Marten, and Anne once the photos are recovered. Whatever happens, White acted wholly on his own, or—(check with Arnie) as previously discussed re: separate clandestine Hadrian/SimCo relationship—with no involvement by Striker whatsoever. White should immediately and very publicly be terminated (he will go to jail anyway) and
SimCo reorganized for continued operation in E.G. (Side note: SimCo’s a good operation with personnel already in place in E.G. No need to completely dismantle it.)
2: As above, prepare quick, smart, well-placed public relations spin, esp. in D.C.
—
There was no need for Wirth to read more. He looked over at White. Rage devouring him, his eyes little more than tiny, furious dots. “You were in my room at the Ritz while I was talking to your man in the bar.”
“I’m pleased to know SimCo is a good operation, Mr. Wirth. Perhaps you’d like to make a call and tell me personally.” He held out his left hand. In it was Wirth’s blue-tape BlackBerry. “You must have left it in your room knowing you were going to see me in person and therefore would not have to call.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You have two BlackBerrys, Mr. Wirth. One to call me and one to call everyone else. You put the blue tape on mine so you wouldn’t get them mixed up. Calls from the blue tape get routed through Hadrian headquarters in Manassas so it appears that they come from there and not you. I do my homework, Mr. Wirth. Even when it’s necessarily rushed.”
Wirth stared at him for a long moment. “How much do you want?” he said finally.
“Have another drink, Mr. Wirth.”
12:47 A.M.
12:52 A.M.
The BMW moved south across the six-lane 25th of April Bridge at cruising speed, its windshield wipers slowly beating against what was now little more than a drizzle. One car passed them coming north. Another going south overtook them and went by, and then that was all; the roadway was dark in either direction. Behind, the lights of Lisbon glowed against the night sky. In front were the city lights of Almada on the southern shore. Beneath was the dark ribbon of the Tagus River two hundred and thirty feet below.
The only sounds inside the car were the hum of the tires and the steady beat of the windshield wipers. Josiah Wirth looked from Irish Jack to Patrice and then to Conor White. Each man was silent, looking straight ahead, nothing more than a passenger in a moving vehicle. “Where are we going?” he asked finally, fearfully.
“To a funeral,” Conor White said softly.
Wirth saw Irish Jack glance in the mirror. Abruptly he swung the wheel, and the BMW crossed into the far right lane. A glance in the mirror and he stepped on the brakes. A heartbeat later the car slid to a stop, and Irish Jack and Patrice got out.
“What’s going on?” Wirth yelled at Conor White.
“As you said, Mr. Wirth. We’ll get out of this yet. We’ll look back and laugh.”
Suddenly Wirth realized. “No! No! No, please! No!”
“Don’t beg, Mr. Wirth. It’s beneath you.”
Abruptly the door beside the Striker chairman was thrown open, and the strongest hands he’d ever felt in his life dragged him from the car. He glimpsed the face of Irish Jack and then Patrice. Each carried the stone-cold, passionless expression of a professional killer.
“No!” Wirth screamed. “No! No! No!”
There was a wild scuffling of feet as he was wrestled toward the rail. He tried to kick, bite, fight back. Anything to get free. Nothing worked. He felt himself hoisted up and saw Conor White step out of the car and come toward him. Then he was standing next to him, the number 2, Ticonderoga 1138 pencils in his hand. He held them in front of his face and snapped them in half.
“Watch,” he said and let the pieces fall away. They drifted down as if in some kind of super-slow motion to vanish in the darkness below.
“You won’t hear them hit. You won’t hear anything, Mr. Wirth.”
“No, no—please! Don’t do this. Please don’t! Help! Help! God please help me! Please!” Wirth beseeched any man, god, or spirit for the first time in his life.
None answered.
“I asked you not to beg, Mr. Wirth.”
Suddenly he was hoisted over the rail. The hands that held him let go. There was a rush of cool air and the sensation of falling from a great height. He heard himself scream. Then he glimpsed the lights of the city. For a long moment he felt as if he were flying. A majestic bird in a world he’d never known. Then the blackness below rose up around him and he plunged headlong into it.
12:57 A.M.