The Hadrian Memorandum (36 page)

100

PORTELA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT. 8:42 A.M.

Carlos Branco waited at the bottom of the steps as Congressman Joe Ryder and his personal RSO detail, agents Chuck Birns and Tim Grant, came down the steps of their Gulfstream 200 and stepped onto Lisbon soil. Grant and Birns, Branco knew, had been assigned to Ryder for the past fifteen months as his sworn protectors when he traveled outside of the United States, and he trusted them completely. That meant they had a long-standing, interlocking loyalty and made them people he might well have trouble wresting away from the congressman when the time came and he tried to pull the entire RSO detail back in order to give Conor White and his gunmen singular access to their targets.

“RSO Special Agent Anibal Da Costa, Congressman,” Branco said smartly as he introduced himself. “Welcome to Lisbon, sir. This way, gentlemen, please.”

Immediately he turned and led them toward a black Chevy Suburban SUV parked on the tarmac twenty feet away where two more RSO agents waited, the rest of the Lisbon embassy detail.

Moments later they were driving past security gates and heading into the city, taking the same route Branco had used barely twelve hours earlier when he’d brought Conor White and his men in from the same airport.

He’d been right when he told White that Marten would not recognize him the next time they met. The clean-shaven, dark-haired man in the Hawaiian shirt and blue jeans he’d seen last night in the Hotel Lisboa Chiado now wore a tailored black suit, white shirt, and tie, and had gray hair and a neatly trimmed full beard of the same color. Moreover, his natural hazel-green eyes were now covered by deep blue contact lenses, a further safeguard in the event Marten had been paying that much attention; which he might well have been, considering what he had done to the men in the blue Jaguar.

That thought, coupled with the presence of Congressman Ryder sitting in the seat behind him now, reminded him of the real-politik of the situation, the cold truth of why he had been brought aboard as a “painter” to set things up for White. Anne Tidrow, Ryder, and Marten, each in his or her own way, and for reasons unknown to him and possibly even COS Moyer, had become exceedingly dangerous to the CIA and had to be treated as such. Ryder’s personal RSO detail had to be looked at that way, too. It was why he had recruited the people he had: five former members of the Portuguese army Batalhão de Comandos, counterguerrilla special forces commandos who would shadow Anne and Marten the moment they left the building on Rua do Almada to wherever he and his RSO detail brought Ryder to meet them. Meaning they would have both parties covered from start to finish with neither aware of it and giving them little or no chance for escape. And if, at the crucial moment, Birns and Grant, Ryder’s RSO people, attempted to interfere with his pullback of the entire RSO detail, his commandos would cut them to pieces—dedicated State Department employees regrettably caught in a crossfire between his own RSO detail and assailants unknown—in the process leaving Anne and Marten and Joe Ryder to the mercy of Conor White and the men he had brought with him.

FOUR SEASONS HOTEL RITZ. 9:30 A.M.

Branco opened the door to Ryder’s seventh-floor suite, and the entourage entered. Birns and Grant went in first, giving the elegantly appointed quarters careful inspection. They would find nothing out of the ordinary. The suite had been electronically swept and cleared by the Lisbon RSO detail more than two hours earlier. Everything was clean. Perfect. Everything except for the tiny listening devices Branco had installed himself when he’d come there alone at six fifteen, bugging the landline telephones and Internet connections, devices he’d deliberately kept the Lisbon RSO people from finding then and kept Birns and Grant from discovering now. Ryder’s personal cell phone activity and that of Birns and Grant had been meticulously monitored by a private communications contractor CIA COS Moyer had employed from the moment the congressman’s plane entered the Lisbon cell phone grid.

Their inspection completed, Birns nodded to Ryder, who in turn looked to Branco.

“Thank you. I want you to know we appreciate the special attention.”

“We enjoy our work, sir.” Branco smiled.

“I know you do. Now, I’m going to work out some travel fatigue with a quick swim in the hotel pool, then come back to the room and attend to some business. I’ll need a car about eleven thirty. I’m having lunch with an old friend.”

“Where, sir?”

“Café Hitchcock. In the Alfama district. You know it?”

“Yes, sir. It’s less than a ten-minute drive from here.”

“Thank you, Agent Da Costa.”

“The pleasure is ours, sir.”

With that Branco left, taking his two Lisbon RSO agents with him.

Ryder watched the door close behind them, then looked to Grant and Birns, who were booked into the connecting room. “I’m going down to the pool. Get yourselves settled, then come down to meet me.”

“Best you wait for us, sir,” Grant said. “We’ll escort you.”

“This is the Ritz, fellas, not a bunker in Iraq. But thanks, I’ll wait.”

“Give us a couple of minutes.”

With that they opened the door and went into the adjoining room.

Ryder took a breath and walked over to the window to look out over the city’s Eduardo VII Park, and the Marquês de Pombal roundabout at the top of the Avenida da Liberdade at the edge of it. Every tree and blade of grass sparkled joyfully in the morning sun, making the city itself, despite the circumstances at hand, seem clean and wonderfully refreshed from the rain of the night before.

President Harris had reached him just before his plane entered Lisbon airspace. The first thing he’d asked was if Ryder completely trusted his own RSO detail, to which he’d answered in the affirmative. The second was not a question but a warning: Trust no one from the Lisbon embassy. Assume your movements are being watched, that your room is bugged and all of your phones monitored, cells included. Then:

“Do not try to contact Marten. You’ll have to take your own RSO people into your confidence and just hope to hell they’re not professionally, psychologically, or in any other way beholden to the RSO/Lisbon people. You will need to get out of your hotel quickly and unseen. Your people should be able to help you do it. Now,”
he said,
“write this down,”
and Ryder had.

“You are to meet Marten and Anne Tidrow at the Hospital da Universidade, University Hospital, 25 Rua Serpa Pinto at eleven local time. Come in the rear entrance. A large, balding man named Mário Gama, the hospital’s director of security, will be behind the desk. Introduce yourself as John Ferguson of the American Insurance Company and say you are there to meet Catarina Silva, the accounts receivable director. He’ll take you to where Marten and Anne are. At eleven fifteen a laundry truck will meet the three of you and your RSO detail outside the same entrance you came in. Go directly to the airport, get on your plane, and get the hell out of there.”
The president had been emphatic, the tenor of his voice emphasizing both the danger and the significance of what they were attempting.

“Anne and Marten will be carrying very important information, so the whole thing, once you meet them, has to be bang, bang, bang. If you run into trouble and can’t make it on time, Marten will wait until eleven thirty. If you don’t show up, if it doesn’t work at all, then repeat everything at the exact same time tomorrow. Lastly, tell the embassy RSO people you’re meeting an old friend for lunch and that you will need a car at eleven thirty. The place is the Café Hitchcock in the Alfama district. It’s well away from the area where the hospital is. That will have them thinking you’re staying in your room until then, and they’ll stand down, for a little while anyway, which hopefully will be long enough for you to get out of the hotel and to Marten.”

With that he’d wished him well and signed off quickly. He’d sounded like he felt he’d already spoken too long and was worried—calling as he had at nearly three o’clock in the morning Washington time—that someone from his Secret Service detail would come into his room to make certain he was alright and then set a wave of gossip rolling with speculation about who he had been talking to and why.

“Ready to go down to the pool, sir?” Agent Grant stood in the doorway to the adjoining room.

“You bet. Right now.”

9:37 A.M.

101

9:40 A.M.

Hunched over, flashlight beam focused in front of them, the Glock automatic in his waistband, Marten led Anne down a dark, narrow, low-ceilinged, cobweb-filled brick-and-mortar passageway that led from the basement of the building at 17 Rua do Almada to that of the building next door. It was a corridor that, theoretically at least, would continue on to the building after that and the one after that, ending finally in the basement at number 9, the last edifice on the block, which was at the far end of the park and a good fifty yards down from where the lookouts were stationed.

These long-unused connecting passageways had been built during World War II, when a neutral Portugal became a temporary haven for Jewish refugees fleeing Central Europe and Lisbon was a major transit point for exit to the United States. Sections of the Baixa, Chiado, and Bairro Alto districts with their close proximity to the harbor were favorites not only of the refugees but of Nazi spies commanded to report their movements and the names and destinations of the ships they boarded. As a result, the owners of many buildings like those on Rua do Almada built secret, interconnecting subterranean corridors through, and sometimes under, the buildings’ cellars in order to help smuggle people unnoticed to waiting ships in the attempt to keep the transit lines open and create as little political turbulence for Portugal as possible.

Anne and Marten were attempting much the same thing now. Only their destination was not a ship on the waterfront but an electrician’s van parked at the end of the block. With luck, and if the passageways were still navigable after nearly seventy years of nonuse, and if they left the building at number 9 and climbed unseen into the van Raisa had waiting, they should arrive at Hospital da Universidade on Rua Serpa Pinto after a reasonably short ride and pretty much on time.

That Raisa had been able to put the entire rescue plan together so quickly was a marvel in itself. She had taken Marten’s call at seven fifteen. At seven eighteen she was in the top-floor apartment dressed in the rose-colored bathrobe and slippers she’d worn the night before and listening carefully to what Marten had to say, knowing all the while that with Anne present he would have to find a way to let her know what was happening and what needed to be done without referring to President Harris by name or office.

And he had, telling her that an American politician had just flown in by private plane from Iraq, and they needed to meet with him as soon as possible and in a place that was private and out of the public eye. Further, there were people outside her building now waiting to follow them to wherever that place was. What they hoped she could do was provide them with that meeting place and a way that they could get to it, quickly and without being seen by those outside. Further, wherever that place was, they would all have to leave it soon afterward undetected for a trip to the airport and the politician’s plane. Complicating things even more was the fact that they had no way to contact their man without the people outside knowing. It was a big order, Marten understood, and made on very short notice. He ended his plea with a simple sentence. “I think you appreciate where this is coming from.”

“I appreciate very well where this is coming from,” Raisa said with a smile. “Old lovers die hard.”

If Anne had been caught up in the game of “what the hell’s going on?” she didn’t show it. Instead she gave Raisa a warning. “The people watching outside will have very sophisticated electronic listening equipment. Any conversation coming into or going out of the building will be heard, traced, and recorded, and that includes the line in this apartment that transfers out through your laundry company.”

“Then we’ll have to find another means.” Raisa walked off, lifting a BlackBerry from the pocket of her robe as she did. They saw her scan a list of names and numbers programmed into it. Immediately she put it away, turned, and came back.

“My laundry is called A Melhor Lavanderia, Lisboa, or Best Laundry of Lisbon. It’s not far from here. I go to my office there every morning, as I will do now. When I have something to tell you I will send a messenger. A teenage boy named Otavio. He will give you a slip of paper with instructions. Follow them exactly.”

“Raisa,” Marten said, “we can’t just walk out through the front door, or the back, either.”

It was then she’d told them about the network of passageways, warning of their age and probable condition but saying she thought they were still passable. “Look for a blue electrician’s van with white and gold lettering, Serviço Elétrico de Sete Dias—Seven Day Electrical Service. It will be parked at the end of the last house on the block. Go out the basement door and to it quickly. The driver will take you where you need to go. A truck from my laundry will get you to the airport.”

“You realize our man will have to know where to meet us and when,” Marten said quietly.

Raisa smiled again. “I will take care of it myself.” She looked at Anne. “Dirty little secrets, my dear. I’m sure you understand.”

“Of course,” Anne matched Raisa’s smile. “Old lovers, like old girlfriends, die hard.” Her eyes went to Marten. He didn’t respond.

9:45 A.M.

Marten moved the beam of his flashlight across an old, rough-hewn wooden barricade that closed off the passageway in front of them. He studied it for the briefest second, then looked over his shoulder at Anne.

“I don’t know what this is. Hold the light,” he said and handed the flashlight to her. They’d been less than twenty minutes in the underground corridors, passing from Raisa’s building and then through the next and the next. The smell of must and mold permeated the air, and the going had been frustratingly slow. Rubble from partially crumbled walls, pieces of old furniture, and plumbing and electrical fixtures stored for years and forgotten had had to be moved, climbed over, or squeezed around. At one point there had been what was left of the carcass of a long-dead dog.

Now the way into the last building at 9 Rua do Almada was completely blocked off and the clock was counting down. Marten had no idea how long it would take to break through the obstruction. Or if it was even possible. And then there were the other questions. How long could an electrician’s truck wait outside without drawing notice from the men watching number 17? And what about Ryder? Was he on his way to Rua Serpa Pinto and the Hospital da Universidade? Had he even received the directive of where to go and when to meet? Even if he had, had he been able to slip away from the main RSO detail? What if he reached the hospital and found they weren’t there? What if they got there and he never showed up? What if they had to revert to the backup plans, retrace their steps, and do the same thing all over again tomorrow? And if he still wasn’t there? What then? And what about the here and now? What if they couldn’t move the barricade and had to go back to the apartment?

“Christ,” he swore out loud, then put his shoulder against the heavy wood and pushed. Nothing happened. He shoved at it again. Still nothing. He looked at Anne. She, like himself, was coated with more than a half century of brick and mortar dust. It covered their clothes, was in their hair, smeared on their faces, inhaled into their lungs. The only thing that helped her even a little was the bucket hat that he’d worn the night before and had asked her to wear when they left, hopefully making her less recognizable to anyone watching outside when they made their break for the electrician’s van.

Marten hit the barricade again. There was a sudden rain of dirt and dust from above and the obstruction gave just a little.

“Okay!” he said and hit it again. More dust and rubble came down. One more time and it moved. Not much but more than before. Once again. And then again. Finally he had enough room for them to squirrel through.

“Give me the light,” he said. Anne did, and Marten inched his head and shoulders into the opening. As he did a rat the size of a small cat dropped down from above. It landed on his head and clung there.

He cried out and tried to shake it free. Instead the terrified animal dug its claws into his scalp and held on. “Get the fuck off me!” he yelled and managed to bring his arm up to swat at it. Finally the rodent let go, jumped to the floor, and scampered off into the darkness. Marten swung the light in time to see a dozen more rats scurry off after it.

He took a breath and turned the light back at Anne, then helped her past the barricade and into the passageway beside him, his eyes close on her purse that she’d slung crossways over her chest. The purse that carried the prized contraband—the photographs and the 35 mm film strips of the Memorandum.

He took a moment to look at her before moving on in an attempt to judge her psychological state. Her eyes were clear and intent, as they had been ever since she’d found him on the phone with the president. Hopefully, with sleep, the episode she’d suffered the night before had passed and the most he had to concern himself with now was the ticking clock of the present. She’d had a few changes of underwear, but she still wore the jean outfit she’d had on since Erlanger’s house in Potsdam. It was worn and dirty and in desperate need of washing, but under the circumstances it didn’t matter. That he was in the same clothes he’d worn since Berlin didn’t matter, either. At the moment they might well have been thrust back in time, as much refugees as anyone who had passed that way those many years before. The only difference now was the enemy. They were fleeing the agents not of Hitler’s death machine but of their own country.

“What are you looking at?” she said finally.

“Trying to make sure you weren’t afraid of rats.”

“Only the human kind.”

“Me, too.” He swung the light into the passageway ahead.

“Nicholas.”

“What?” He looked back.

“Thank you for last night. I kind of lost it.”

He smiled gently. “I cried in Berlin. You cried in Lisbon. Now we’re even, so forget it.”

“I won’t forget it.”

“We have a congressman to meet.”

“I know.”

He watched her for a heartbeat longer. “Let’s get to it,” he said finally, then turned the light and they moved on.

9:52 A.M.