by Allan Folsom
Now or ever.
8:20 P.M.
In the growing twilight he could see the black Mercedes limousine that had brought the captives to the farm house parked under an overhang of trees. Its liveried driver and a similarly dressed local gunman, who had met White and the two SimCo mercenaries he’d brought with him from Bioko to Madrid and driven them there, were standing nearby smoking and chatting. Fourth and fifth hands if a problem arose inside the house. As if it would with the men stationed there: Irish Jack Hanahan, a former member of Sciathán Fianóglach an Airm, the Ranger Wing of the Irish army, with massive thirty-two-inch thighs, lightning reflexes, and fists like hams; and the wiry, almost too handsome French-Canadian with piercing green eyes, Patrice Sennac, at one time the CIA’s top Central American counterinsurgent, a veteran jungle fighter, who had a long scar at the side of his mouth to prove it. Depending on the situation, either man could be absurdly polite or grimly lethal to anyone, friend, enemy, or whoever fell in between. Like those waiting for him to come back inside and begin the questioning once more—the young Spanish doctor and her four medical students. Five people who might very well know what the Equatorial Guinean army interrogators had failed to find out—the location of the photographs. Might very well know because Nicholas Marten would have had every opportunity to tell them: on the road to Malabo from where they had first met on the beach in Bioko South, or in Malabo itself at the hotel over drinks, or, last and most likely of all, on the long overnight plane ride to Paris.
White would have much preferred to have gone after Marten himself and left the doctor and her students to others, but that assignment had gone to Anne, who Truex, Sy Wirth, and Anne herself felt could get closer to Marten than he could. So instead he was given the secondary target, the five now inside the house.
The thing driving it all was urgency. Find the photographs and destroy them before they fell into what could only be referred to as “public hands.” For White the pressure was all the greater because he was a prominent figure in any number of the pictures, and if they were made public everything he’d worked for all his life would be gone.
Everything.
Colin Conor White had been born in London, the only child of a young barmaid and George Winston White, a London railway worker who died of a heart attack several weeks after his son was born. Soon afterward Conor’s mother, in grief and despair, left the city and went to live near her sister in a small two-room flat in Birmingham in west central England, where he grew up street-tough and all but impoverished. When he was eleven, and quite by accident, he discovered a farewell note tucked away in a cabinet above the kitchen sink in a long-forgotten box of memorabilia. In it, he learned that his father had not been a railway worker at all but instead a very married man. His name, what he did, and even the truth of the note were things his mother refused to discuss during an anger-filled confrontation, telling him in no uncertain terms that the idea was preposterous and that she had no idea who had written the note or where it had come from and warning him not to bring up the subject again.
Her heated denial only sent him digging for more. A careful examination of the London Transport Executive records, the railway authority at the time, determined that no worker named George Winston White had been employed there within two years of his birth. Eighteen months later and after considerable snooping, he discovered the man to be Sir Edward Raines, a handsome, silver-haired, longtime member of Parliament and former decorated officer in the British army who had lost an arm in the Battle of Crater during the Aden Emergency on the Arabian Peninsula in 1963. Raines, it seemed, was not only his father but was paying his mother a yearly stipend to keep silent about it.
Challenged again, his mother, quite irritably, kept to her original story, refusing to acknowledge any such person or arrangement. Moreover, the confrontation caused her to sink deeper into her own increasingly apparent mood of base self-pity. How dare he think a “somebody” such as Sir Edward Raines would even consider paying attention to a woman who barely had a grade school education and no breeding whatsoever? He could still hear the shrill, anger-filled ring of her voice:
“You should get it permanently through your head, Mr. Conor White, that neither me nor you will ever have that kind of social status and that you had best prepare yourself for a working man’s life and not be making up silly fantasies about who you might prefer your father to have been. They will get you no further than the two-room flat we live in, if you’re that lucky.”
Maybe so. But fantasies or not, he had other ideas and had gone directly to Sir Edward himself demanding a confirmation of his paternity. Or rather he’d tried to. Each time he’d been rebuffed by an intermediary, Sir Edward refusing to even see him.
Powerfully built, sullen and angry, and little more than a street tough, Conor White’s salvation had come through a determination to be as celebrated and socially acceptable as his father. Through a love of reading and the physical escape of rugby, which he’d played with a ferocity aimed directly at Sir Edward, he won a full scholarship to Eton College, where he excelled in English and was captain of the rugby team. Success there provided him entry and a scholarship to Oxford; upon graduation, he joined the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst determined to become an officer in the British Army. Not long afterward he managed an invitation to join the elite special forces unit known as the SAS. It was an invitation he jumped at because it promised the opportunity to become a frontline soldier in highly dangerous combat situations and, not so coincidentally, offered a playing field where, with luck and extreme courage he could become a military hero. The same as his father had been.
And for most of the last quarter century he had followed that path, building a stellar reputation as a top line operator in extremely high-risk situations across the globe. His SAS career alone, with an extraordinary run of decorations, was proof enough. Distinguished Service Order, or DSO, presented for meritorious service, valor in the face of the enemy, Iraq, 1991. DSO, Iraq, 1998. DSO, Bosnia, 2000. DSO, Sierra Leone, 2002. Victoria Cross, the United Kingdom’s highest award for bravery, presented by the queen for duty in Af ghan i stan, 2003. DSO, Iraq, 2004. Then he’d moved into the private sector, where, even now, he remained a poster-boy hero with plans to one day run for parliamentary office. So to have it all come to a thundering end—his face smeared across the Internet and worldwide television, to be seen staring out from the covers of newspapers and tabloids everywhere as a lackey for an oil company intent on overthrowing the government of a third world country for its own gain, no matter how tyrannical the regime—was a humiliation he could and would not suffer.
8:22 P.M.
He reached the house and set the shovel alongside the front door, giving it a second glance as he did, wondering if more graves would have to be dug that night. A deep breath of resolve and he took a black balaclava from his jacket pocket, pulled it on, then opened the door and went inside.
The five “guests” were as he had left them, sitting in the glow of lantern light on a rustic wooden bench in the room that was once part kitchen, part dining area. By now he knew them by name—Marita, Gilberto, Rosa with the big glasses, Luis, the red-haired Ernesto. All were as pale, terrified, and silent as they’d been when he’d gone out. Except for Marita, they all stared at the floor. Her eyes had been on him the moment he stepped through the door. They were filled with defiance and hatred.
Irish Jack stood at the end of the bench, his arms crossed over his chest. Patrice was in front of them, feet apart, his arms behind him. Both wore the jeans and pullover sweaters he did. Both had automatic pistols in Kevlar holsters strapped to their thighs. Both wore the same kind of black balaclava he did.
“Who is ready to talk about the photographs?” White said in his crisp British accent.
“For the hundredth time, we cannot tell you what we don’t know,” Marita spat angrily.
Conor White looked at the frightened, sullen faces and scratched his head. “Maybe we’re making this too hard,�
� he said evenly and with that reached up and pulled off his balaclava. This was the first time he had been without it, and he could see their surprise as they recognized him from the bar in the Hotel Malabo. “Gentlemen”—he looked to Patrice and Irish Jack and nodded—“a little politeness, please. No reason to alarm these people any further.”
Immediately both men removed their balaclavas and tucked them into their belts.
White moved a little closer. “You now see we are forthright and mean you no harm. All this has come about because of the civil war in Bioko. The photographs are very important to the oil company that employs us. Our job is to recover them, and right away. Once we do you will be free to go.”
Suddenly Rosa looked up and boldly repeated Marita’s words. “We cannot tell you what we don’t know.”
“No, I don’t suppose you can.” White hesitated for a moment, then looked to Patrice. “We need to speed this up.”
“Yes, sir.”
Patrice took a half step to stand right in front of them. He looked from one to the other to the other, turned toward Marita, then abruptly reversed his move and stepped in front of Rosa. A gasp went up from the others as a second later Irish Jack moved behind her to take hold of her shoulders in an iron grip White himself couldn’t escape from.
“Marita!” Rosa cried out.
In the next instant Patrice slid the automatic from his holster and slid it up under her nose.
White’s eyes went to Marita. “Where are the photographs?”
Marita’s eyes went to Rosa in horror, then came back to him. “For God’s sake, we don’t know! We’ve told you that over and over!”
“That’s too bad.”
Conor White nodded at Patrice. Irish Jack stepped to the side and Patrice pulled the trigger. There was an ear-shattering roar and Rosa’s head exploded, her oversized glasses disappearing behind her, her body collapsing like a rag doll across the bench.
White gave them no chance to recover, just walked over to Marita. “The photographs. Where are they?”
Numbed, horrified, Marita simply shook her head.
“You’re still telling me you don’t know?”
“Yes. No. God! We don’t know! Please! My God, please! Please!”
White looked at Gilberto and then Luis and then Ernesto. In the next instant he reached into a holster at the back of his belt and pulled a short-barrel SIG SAUER 9 mm semiautomatic from it. In one fluid motion, he turned and shot Marita point-blank in the head.
8:27 P.M.
31
BERLIN. STILL FRIDAY, JUNE 4. 8:30 P.M.
The tour boat Monbijou had left the landing at 8:02, motored up the Spree to a turning point, and was now headed back into a city beginning to come alive for the night. The initial fears Anne and Marten had had about being seated on the upper deck and therefore open to view from shore had been quieted by the sheer number of other passengers surrounding them, easily eighty in all plus two harried, white-jacketed waiters rushing back and forth to the lower deck to retrieve drinks and snacks in an attempt to keep the topsiders happy. If much of Berlin had been psychologically pained by the murder of Theo Haas, that mood wasn’t evident here. In all probability that was because most of the passengers were English-speaking foreigners unaware of the emotional magnitude of the crime and its effect on the city.
Still, Marten was concerned, chiefly about the people seated nearby. He was afraid they might have seen his picture on television or be getting fresh information from the cell phones and other electronic gadgets seemingly everyone had despite the fact they had come on board to relax and enjoy the sights. Yet, so far at least, none had even looked his way, leading him to think that maybe Anne hadn’t been as foolish as he thought when she’d tossed him the Dallas Cowboys baseball cap and told him to put it on.
The public aside, or even the police who might be watching through field glasses from the embankment as they passed, the thing that troubled him most was Anne herself. The questions he’d put to her earlier—who she really was and what her motivations were—remained unanswered, primarily because they were in public and trying to keep a low profile. So he’d let it go, at least for now.
For a time he’d simply watched the city as they passed by and thought about what he would do next, a sticky problem in itself because he both needed her and wanted to get rid of her at the same time. Then her BlackBerry had sounded. She’d answered and said quietly, “I am, yes. It’s alright. No, not so far. Not certain just yet. Yes. Okay.”
She’d clicked off immediately and was putting the device in her purse when it rang again. She clicked on, said a generic “Hi,” gave the second caller very nearly the same information as the first, then clicked off and put the phone away. Afterward she’d smiled and kissed his cheek, taking his hand as if they were the lovebirds they’d portrayed to the police on the street. Not once had she mentioned either call.
If Marten had seen the text memo she’d sent earlier to Sy Wirth and copied to Loyal Truex and Conor White, he might have understood.
Meeting with our short-list candidate in Berlin. He is somewhat reluctant to join the firm so will need more time to help persuade him to change his mind. Home office execs joining us here to help in the process would only complicate things. More later.
What it had been was an affirmation that she’d trailed Marten to Berlin, had located him, and wanted no interference from any of them. That she had sent the text before the murder of Theo Haas only complicated things, because with Haas’s death everything changed. Suddenly Marten had become a prime suspect in his murder, and very soon, if not already, the police would know she had been with him shortly afterward. Once they had traced them to the Adlon, they would know her identity as well. And what the hell would Messrs. Wirth, Truex, and White do about that once they learned of it?
But Marten had known nothing of that communication at all. What he would know was that in the last minutes she had received two brief calls that she had replied to ambiguously. Who they had been from or what they were about he could only guess, and she intended to leave it that way. Then, just seconds later, her BlackBerry had chimed a third time. She’d taken it from her purse, read a brief text message, then clicked off. What it had been about Marten wouldn’t know, either, but from the way he looked at her, it was clear the run of recent communications was beginning to trouble him enough that she was afraid he might bolt from her the first chance he got. To ease his concern, and hers, she was about to tell him what had been in the text when the world around them suddenly got in the way.
“Would you mind, sir?” one of the white-jacketed waiters, a fiftyish man with curly eyebrows and a mustache, had stopped beside them. He carried a tray on which were balanced a half-dozen large glasses of beer and was looking directly at Marten, who, on the aisle seat, was closest to him.
“For the people next to your wife,” he said with a smile. “Sure,” Marten said, taking one and then another of the glasses. One, two he handed them to Anne, who then passed them on to a middle-aged Australian couple seated next to them.
“Ten euros will make it,” the waiter said.
The Australian woman dug in her purse and handed a twenty-euro bill to Anne, who handed it to Marten, who passed it to the waiter. Change came back the same way, and then a three-euro tip went back to the waiter, who said, “Dankeschön,” and moved off to deliver the remaining beverages to a foursome two rows forward.
“Thank you.” The Australian woman smiled at Anne.
“Our pleasure.” Anne returned the smile, then gave it a minute and looked to Marten. Lowering her voice, she gave him the gist of the text message. “Our accommodations are ready, darling. Get off at the next landing.”
8:38 P.M.
32
HOTEL ADLON, ROOM 647. 8:42 P.M.
Hauptkommissar Emil Franck watched veteran police dog trainer Friedrich Handler lead two eager Belgian Malinois into the bathroom, remove their leashes, and show them the bathrobe and towels Anne Tidrow had us
ed after her shower. Both animals nuzzled and sniffed and then for a moment stood motionless. Handler nodded, and as one they backed up, leaving the confines of the bathroom to explore the hotel room itself. In thirty seconds they had covered it, stopping first at the clothes closet, then moving to the chair near the television, then finally sniffing around the bed. An instant later they headed for the door. Handler leashed them again. Then, with a nod from Franck, he opened the door and they went out.
8:47 P.M.
The dogs led them down a set of rear stairs and to the Adlon’s back entrance on Behrenstrasse. Outside, the Malinois turned left and then left again onto Wilhelmstrasse, tugging Handler and Hauptkommissar Franck in the direction of Unter den Linden. In less than a minute they had crossed the boulevard and were going in the direction of the Spree.
“Hauptkommissar.” A male voice came through a tiny receiver in Franck’s right ear.
Franck lifted his police radio and slowed, letting Handler and the Malinois move ahead. “Yes.”
“Hannah Anne Tidrow is on the board of directors of the AG Striker Oil and Energy Company of Houston, Texas. The same AG Striker company that is under contract to the U.S. State Department in Iraq.”