The Hadrian Memorandum (21 page)

55

1:53 A.M.

“We have clearance for takeoff?” Marten was looking at Brigitte as he climbed into the Cessna. She was sitting at the controls studying navigational charts under a high-intensity cockpit light. Behind her, he could see Anne watching from the darkened cabin.

“Yes, sir,” Brigitte said.

“Then let’s go.”

“Yes, sir,” she said again.

Marten slid past her on his way to his seat. As he did he saw the two women exchange glances.

“What was that for?” he said as he buckled in.

Anne raised an eyebrow. “How long does it take to pee?”

Marten grinned. “Sometimes it works right away and sometimes it takes a little coaxing.”

Brigitte turned out the cockpit light and the lights of the instrument panel in front of her came to life. There was a sharp whine as she touched the ignition. A second later the port engine caught, then the starboard, and with a roar of propellers the Cessna moved off.

Marten waited a moment, then looked to Anne and lowered his voice, the lightheartedness of seconds earlier gone. “I specifically requested a faster plane. We didn’t get it. Whose idea was that, yours or Erlanger’s? Or was it someone else?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I asked you before about what Erlanger said in Potsdam before we took off. You didn’t want to discuss it. With all your connections in Berlin, he, or whoever arranged for the plane, could have found the kind of aircraft I wanted. It didn’t happen. And for one reason. They gave us a two-hundred-mile-an-hour Cessna so they could use a five-hundred-mile-an-hour jet to track us. That way we couldn’t outfly them in the event we changed course. They know the kind of aircraft we’re in, its registration number, who our pilot is, our flight plan, everything. Not to mention this.”

Marten took a small black box from his jacket and held it out to her. “Looks like a Hide-A-Key, doesn’t it?” He slid it open and took out a thin, flat object about four inches long and an inch wide. A tiny red light blinked off and on in the center of it. “I found it under the copilot’s seat. Just clipped in like whoever did it didn’t have much time.”

She looked at it and then at Marten. “It’s a bug, a transmitter.”

“I don’t suppose you knew about it.”

“No.”

“I didn’t think you would,” he smiled cynically. “I’m sure whoever put it there did it just to make sure we didn’t get lost.” Abruptly his demeanor hardened. “What does the CIA have to do with this? And don’t say you don’t know. I could see it in the way you looked at Erlanger when he spoke to you. He was warning you about something, and it upset you a great deal. What was it?”

Brigitte swung the Cessna sharply right and onto the runway, then accelerated for takeoff, the roar of its twin engines earsplitting as the plane gained speed. Ten seconds, then twenty and thirty, then they were up, the lights of Bordeaux-Mérignac Airport disappearing beneath them.

Anne glanced at Brigitte, then looked to Marten and lowered her voice. “I’m not sure how much Erlanger already knew or what he had just learned. But I put it together with something that happened that last night at the hotel in Malabo. As I was leaving for the airport I saw Conor White meet with a man in combat fatigues. He was armed and unshaven and looked as if he’d been in the rain forest for several days if not more. They talked briefly and then left together. I assumed he was working for SimCo, but I’d never seen him there before.”

“What do you mean ‘there’? Malabo?”

“No. Not anywhere SimCo people were. Malabo or anywhere else on Bioko. Not on the mainland, Rio Muni, either.”

“But you had seen him somewhere before.”

“Not just seen him, I knew him, when I was active CIA in El Salvador. His name is Patrice Sennac. He’s French-Canadian and was then a top contract agent. He’s a first-rate jungle fighter whose specialty is insurgency and counterinsurgency. He’d fight for one side in the morning and the other in the afternoon, working one against the other. Neither side knew.”

“Jungle fighter?”

“Yes, why?”

“He’s tall and very thin. Wiry.”

“How did you know?”

“He was in several of the photographs.”

Anne said nothing, just looked at him in that fearful way she had when Erlanger spoke to her at the airstrip.

“You think White brought him in specifically to help arm Abba’s rebels but kept him out of sight until you left because he knew you would recognize him and ask what he was doing there?”

Still she said nothing.

“Is that what you think happened?”

“Yes,” she said finally.

“Meaning you’re not sure if he’s a SimCo employee or if he still works for the CIA. And if he does, then Conor White might work for them, too, another contract agent with a top security clearance, comfortably inside in the Striker/Hadrian household with neither of them knowing, like the two sides in El Salvador.”

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 Brigitte 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.