by Allan Folsom
10:28 A.M.
Conor White stared absently out the window of the tri-engine Falcon 50 as the chartered jet flew north toward Berlin. Thirty thousand feet below and through a broken cloud deck he could see Geneva and the Jet d’Eau, Lake Geneva’s im mense water fountain, spraying a cannon of water five hundred feet in the air. Yet neither the Swiss city nor the sight of the fountain registered. His thoughts were on Berlin and what would take place when he got there.
The whole thing in Spain had been an unfortunate, messy, and, as it turned out, wholly unnecessary exercise because he realized almost from the start that the Spaniards had no idea where the photographs were, or even what they were. Yet it was a situation he couldn’t walk away from until he knew for certain. He’d pushed it as far as he could, and after that there was no turning back, so he’d finished it with the hope it was something that would not come back to haunt them. Had he had his way in the first place he would have gone after Nicholas Marten directly, but that had not been his assignment; it had been Anne’s. And look what had happened.
As far as he could tell the only thing positive to come from her work was that she had proven that Marten did know where the photographs were. It had been confirmed when she’d called him at the airport in Madrid.
“Where are you?” she’d said. “I just wanted to know where you were if I needed you.”
When he had told her, he’d asked where she was. She had replied that she was in Berlin and warned him not to come there and to disregard anything he saw in the media. It was then he pressed her about Marten, making sure he was with her and asking directly if the photographs existed and if he knew where they were.
“Yes, I think so,” she’d said after an awkward hesitation. She’d affirmed it when he’d pushed her a second time, demanding to know if she was certain.
“Do you think or do you know?” he’d demanded.
“I don’t think, Conor, I know,” she’d snapped, then signed off.
White shook his head. If he had followed Marten, right from the start, by now, police or not, he would have been close on his tail or maybe even had him alone, with Anne nowhere in the picture. Either way the photographs would have soon been recovered and the whole nasty situation quickly resolved. But it hadn’t happened. Instead he was on his way to Berlin not to confront Anne and Marten but to meet with Sy Wirth. For what reason he had no idea, except that Wirth was his employer and was about to act like it. Tell him what to do and how and when to do it.
It was Wirth, he knew, who had had the last word in allowing Anne to follow Marten and sending him to Spain. If he made the same kind of uninformed decisions again, it would be only a matter of time before the police had both Anne and Marten and the photographs. If that happened everything would come apart, and fast.
Abruptly he turned from the window to see Irish Jack and Patrice quietly playing cards across from him. Neatly dressed in jackets and ties as he was, they looked like professional athletes en route to their next game. Which in a way they all were; that is, if he could somehow find a way to keep Sy Wirth out of it. But for the moment, the Texas oilman was calling the shots and White would do his best to accommodate him, graciously and with his best Eton, Oxford, and Sandhurst manners, when they touched down in Berlin.
10:32 A.M.
45
POTSDAM, GERMANY. 10:40 A.M
The van had been stopped for several minutes. From the dark of his hiding place in the compartment over the left rear wheel, Marten wondered what was going on. Erlanger had said something in German, and then the driver and passenger doors had opened and closed. After that there had been nothing. Had they reached their destination or had they been stopped by the police and silently ordered out of the vehicle at gunpoint?
Another minute passed, and then he heard the rear doors open and someone come inside. He held his breath. There was a noise outside the panel next to his head. Abruptly it was removed. He pulled back, expecting to see a man in uniform or even Hauptkommissar Franck with a dozen police crowded in the doorway behind him. Instead Erlanger’s face came into view.
“Are you alright?” he said.
Marten heaved a sigh of relief. “Stiff and a little nervous but alright.”
“I’m sorry. We had no choice. It was a means that worked quite effectively getting people out of the Eastern Sector during the Cold War.”
“I could use a toilet, and in a hurry.”
Anne, still in her blond wig and dowdy clothing, was waiting as he climbed from the van. For a fleeting moment she seemed as if she genuinely cared about his well-being and was grateful the trip was over and they had made it safely. As quickly, she was back to business.
“Come into the house,” she said, then led him past some trees and up a gravel pathway to a two-story house that, from the surroundings, appeared to be in a quiet and leafy residential neighborhood.
Marten used the toilet and then opened the door and started down a hallway toward the front door, the way they’d come in.
“Here.” He heard Erlanger’s voice from a room behind him. He turned back and entered a small, wood-paneled office to see Erlanger alone and just getting up from a desk. Behind him was a window that looked out on a small garden.
“Where is Anne?” Marten asked.
“Upstairs. She’ll be down in a moment. Would you like some coffee?”
“Yes, thank you,” Marten said. Erlanger nodded and left.
Marten looked around. The room, like the little he’d seen of the rest of the house as he came in, was comfortable and worn, filled with a large collection of apparently well read books, knickknacks, and family pictures, as if whoever lived there had done so for years and had no intention of moving. Hardly the hideout of a man fearful of the police.
“Feeling better?” Anne suddenly walked into the room. Gone were the dowdy clothes and blond wig; back were her jeans, tailored jacket, and running shoes, her black hair twisted up in a bun at the back of her head. She looked sexy and impatient and dangerous at same time.
“Yes. You?”
“I’ll be better when we’re moving again. Where do we go from here?”
“Where is here, this house?”
“Potsdam. About a half hour outside of Berlin. It’s Erlanger’s home. He took a big chance bringing us to it. He’ll still help, but we have to set things up as quickly as possible and get out. So, as I said, where do we go from here? Where are the photographs? Neither I nor Erlanger can do anything more until you give me a destination.”
“Does Erlanger know about the pictures?”
“No.”
Marten closed the door. “The whole trip, while I was twisted up in the dark in that little compartment over the wheel well, I was thinking of the cost.”
“Of what?”
“The photographs. How many people are dead because of them. Bioko, Spain, Berlin. Who knows who’ll be next or where it will happen?” He crossed to the window and looked out.
“What are you getting at?”
“That the best thing would be to get in touch with Hauptkommissar Franck and tell him where they are.” He turned to look at her. “Let the German government have them and do what they think is right.”
“That’s not a very good conclusion.”
“Maybe not. But under the circumstances it will do.”
Suddenly Anne flared. “Where are the pictures, Nicholas?”
“I want the war stopped, Anne,” Marten snapped back, his eyes riveted on her. “At the very least slowed to a crawl. The photographs will do that. The world media will pounce. Reporters, camera crews, everything. And not just to Equatorial Guinea but to Houston, where they will be all over Striker management, and to SimCo headquarters in England. There’ll be tough questions about what’s going on. Blogs and talk shows will pick it up. Politicians will get involved because they’ll have to. And the subject won’t disappear the way it always seems to about the Congo or Darfur or other African theaters of horror because an American oil company
and its private military contractor are at the center of it.”
“I want the killing stopped as much as you do. I told you that before.”
“You also said you wanted the photos so you could threaten to turn them over to the Ryder Commission if your friends at Striker and Hadrian and SimCo didn’t stop arming the insurgency.”
“Yes.”
“How do I know your real goal isn’t simply to protect Striker? Get the pictures and destroy them.”
“It’s not.”
“How do I know?”
Anne glared at him. “I’ll ask you what I did yesterday. How much do you want for the photos? Name your price, anything you want.”
“Anything?”
“Yes.”
“I want you.”
“Me?”
“Yes,” he said quietly.
Anne was astounded. “For Christ’s sake, Nicholas, after everything this is about sex? You want to fuck me? Is that your price? Jesus God!”
“I don’t want to fuck you,” he said as quietly as before. “I want you to fuck your company.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Conor White is prominent in a number of the photos.”
“So. You’ve actually seen them.” Anne smiled lightly as if she’d just achieved some sort of cruel victory.
“Some, not all.” Marten stepped closer to her, as if to underscore the gravity of what he was telling her. “The point is Conor White is easily identifiable. Maybe you don’t want to destroy the pictures, but he does because he’s got a helluva lot to lose if they’re made public. Who he kills or how he gets them doesn’t seem to make much difference. One way or another he’s already responsible for the deaths of Father Willy and his brother, to say nothing of my Spanish friends. If you have the photos, Striker board member or not, CIA or not, he’ll kill you as quickly as he will me.”
Anne’s eyes darted over his face. “I still don’t know what you want me to do.”
“If I bring you with me and we get the pictures, we take them to Joe Ryder himself. You tell him who you are and who Conor White is and that you want to do anything you can to stop the flow of weapons to the rebels, hoping that the State Department can then pressure Tiombe into ordering his fighters to stand down.
“Of course, that will lead to his wanting to know more, and you’ll tell him about SimCo as a front company for Hadrian, which in turn will make him go after the Striker/Hadrian enterprise even harder than he already is. If he can prove Hadrian and SimCo are providing arms to the rebels at Striker’s behest, your Mr. Sy Wirth and the other decision makers at Striker, as well as Conor White and the people running Hadrian, will be in for a very ugly time. Prison wouldn’t be out of the question for anyone, you included. You said ‘anything,’ Anne. That’s the price, otherwise—”
Abruptly there was a knock at the door. Erlanger’s voice came through it. “I have coffee. Should I leave it outside?”
“Give us a minute, Hartmann,” Anne said and looked back to Marten. “Otherwise, what?”
“Otherwise I’ll think you want the photos to protect your company and its investments in Equatorial Guinea. I’ll assume they sent you because you’re a very attractive woman and you might use that against me—the way you already have, taking off your robe in the hotel, kissing me in the middle of the street with the police watching, sitting in nothing more than panties and a T-shirt with your nipples showing through as you told me the story of your life. And because you were CIA you would know better than most what the hell you were doing and how to do it. You would have been trained for it.”
For a moment Marten thought he was going to get slapped, but it didn’t happen. Anne just stood there, breathing softly, staring at him in silence.
“That’s the deal,” he said finally. “Understand it?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me you agree.”
“How do you know you can trust me even if I do?”
“Because you just might be telling the truth about doing this for your father—for his memory, for the reputation of the company he built, and because you loved him. And because there’s always Hauptkommissar Franck if you’re not.”
He could feel her nails come up. Her stare cut him in two, but she said nothing. Finally, she nodded almost imperceptibly.
“No, say it,” he pressed her.
“I agree.”
“To everything.”
“To everything.”
He looked at her for a long moment, judging her, deciding the next step. “We’ll need a plane,” he said finally. “Twin engine, civil aviation. Preferably a jet, a turboprop will do. Fifteen-hundred-mile range.”
“The pilot will have to file a flight plan. He’ll need to know where we’re going.”
“Tell him Málaga, on the south coast of Spain.”
“Málaga?”
“Yes,” he lied.
11:12 A.M.
46
BERLIN, 11 GIESEBRECHTSTRASSE. 12:55 P.M.
The meeting place was an expensive third-floor apartment in a building in the western part of the city near Kurfürstendamm. History books would reveal that in the 1930s it had been a high-class brothel called Salon Kitty. In the Second World War it was still a brothel but used by the SD—the Sicherheitsdienst, the Nazi security service—for espionage, primarily the secret recording of private conversations between chic prostitutes, foreign diplomats, and German dignitaries who might become traitors. At the moment the space was being used for a conversation between two people unconcerned with that distant past—Sy Wirth and Conor White.
“How many men do you have with you?” Wirth sat back from a small table where coffee and an arrangement of fresh fruit had been laid out.
“Two,” White said.
“Skilled?”
“The best.”
“Are two enough?”
“For now.”
“Where are they?”
“Outside, in the rental car.”
Wirth reached over and lifted a silver coffee urn and poured himself a cup, gesturing to White to do the same.
“No thanks.”
“Spain went poorly,” Wirth said.
“You mean that we learned nothing about the photographs.”
“Yes.”
“We did as you asked. They had no idea what we were talking about. They and those we employed, a limousine driver and a local gunman, took the truth of what happened there into eternity.” White looked to the Striker chairman for any sign of remorse, or sense that he’d made a mistake ordering the operation. As he expected he saw none.
“Then this Nicholas Marten is the only one who knows.”
“Ask Anne.”
Sy Wirth glared at him, clearly not happy being talked back to. “Anne’s not here. I’m asking you.”
“If the pictures exist, Marten knows where they are. That’s what she said. Otherwise she wouldn’t still be with him.”
Suddenly Wirth shifted gears. “What went wrong at the airport in Paris when they arrived from Malabo? Anne had him in sight when the others lost him. Then she lost him, too. Except several hours later she found him here in Berlin.”
“Apparently she lost him on purpose so she could go after him herself.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Maybe she doesn’t think the rest of us are capable. Maybe some other reason. I don’t know.”
Sy Wirth took a sip of coffee and held the liquid in his mouth, as if he were using the moment to think; then he set the cup down. “When was the last time you spoke with her?”
“This morning.”
“What did she say?”
“Essentially what she sent in her text message yesterday—that she was in Berlin with Marten and not to come after her, and not to believe anything we saw in the media. As far as I know she’s not been publicly identified. Or has she?”
“Not that I’m aware of. Not yet.”
“Then the police must be on to both of them or th
ey would have had her picture all across the German media, the way Marten’s is.” White kept his manner purposely calm. He was still upset with himself for telling Wirth to “ask Anne.” His profound dislike of the Texan had ruled for the moment, and he didn’t like it. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
Wirth glanced at his watch and then stood. “I have to go. Bring your men here and wait for my call. Hopefully I’ll have some idea where Anne is and if Marten is still with her.”
“You will,” White said flatly.
“Yes.”
For the next few seconds White said nothing; then he stood as well, all six feet four of him. “Where will this information come from?” he said respectfully.
“That’s my business.”
“You’ve hired a third party.”
“No, Mr. White. I’ve simply made an arrangement.”
“I see.”
Now they were back to the beginning and White’s deepest fear: that a man too rich, too powerful, and too single-minded, who was used to micromanaging everything, had suddenly distrusted everyone around him and turned elsewhere for solutions. That might be alright in a business deal; all you could lose was money. But in a situation like this he would be venturing into very cold and dangerous waters, and in doing so trusting people far more experienced, self-serving, and ruthless than he. It was a blueprint for disaster, and he was risking everything because of it.
You stupid bastard, White wanted to say. He didn’t.
“I’ll wait for your call, Mr. Wirth,” he said politely.
Sy Wirth nodded curtly and without a further word left.
1:05 P.M.
47
POTSDAM, 1:10 P.M.
Hartmann Erlanger opened a cabinet near the window in his study, pulled a laptop from it, then set it down on his desk. He glanced at Anne and Marten sitting in chairs across from him, then opened it, touched the POWER button, and waited for the screen to come up. When it did he punched in several codes, then twisted it around so that it faced them and looked at Anne.
“This is what I downloaded yesterday after your call. It’s two days old, so I don’t know how much help it will be, but it’s something. I’ll leave it to you and Mr. Marten to decide the importance of it. I’m going out to try to resolve your situation. Arranging for a specific type of aircraft and someone to pilot it is difficult at best. More so under the circumstances and that the request was made at the last minute.”