by Allan Folsom
“Unfortunately, Hartmann, I didn’t have the information until the last minute.” Anne didn’t need to glance at Marten; the barb was clear enough. “You know how appreciative I am for everything you’ve done and are doing. And the chances you’ve been taking all along.”
Erlanger looked at her in a way that was very personal. “That’s what friends and colleagues are for. I’ll be back when I have more information. My wife is upstairs if you need anything.” He held her eyes a moment longer and then left, closing the door behind him.
For a moment Anne sat there motionless, fully aware that Marten had seen the exchange between them. Then, without a word, she leaned forward and pressed a key on the laptop. In the next instant the screen came to life. They saw a graphic of the world globe, then a slow zoom in on West Africa.
“This is a classified CIA regional video briefing,” she said. “Sometimes they come out daily. Other times less often, depending on urgency or need-to-know for handlers or assets in the field. Be warned, this stuff you won’t see on television.”
The video cut to a satellite view of Equatorial Guinea, taking in both the mainland and the island of Bioko. A narrator’s voice was heard.
“The situation in Rio Muni, the nation’s continental mainland, and on the island of Bioko, where the capital city of Malabo lies, is in increasing turmoil. Rebel forces are led by Alfonso Bitui Ada. Popularly known as Abba, he is a schoolteacher and member of the Liberal Party, the PL. Fifteen months ago he was released after serving a ten-year prison sentence for membership in the banned Popular People’s Party. Since then he has worked openly to unite disparate tribes to protest against poverty, political corruption, and acts of physical violence by the administration of President Tiombe.”
Abruptly the video cut to greenish night-vision footage of a poised, handsome, middle-aged man with short graying hair, dressed in jungle fatigues and addressing twenty or more rebel soldiers in a jungle clearing.
“This is Abba, seen in clandestine footage taken three days ago in Bioko as his forces moved north toward the capital city of Malabo. What began little more than ten weeks ago as organized protests against the government in Rio Muni has become all-out armed rebellion fueled primarily by the Equatorial Guinean army’s savage acts of retaliation against the demonstrators. The major tribes, including the Fang, Bubi, and Fernandinos, have united behind Abba. His strength is growing hourly. So, too, are the causalities as Tiombe’s military steps up its activity, engaging in increasingly brutal acts of reprisal against both rebels and civilians. To date estimates of the dead range above four thousand.”
Now the video cut to a gruesome daylight montage of burned-out villages and hundreds of dead citizens. Many had been beheaded or horribly mutilated. Men, women, children, the elderly. Even animals. Dogs, goats, cows; a horse, still saddled, slaughtered and left on the roadway.
“Jesus God,” Marten murmured.
Immediately the images reverted to more clandestine night-vision footage, this time capturing army troops on a rampage through a village. Raw and terrible footage of soldiers executing civilians with machetes, pistols, rifles, and machine guns. There was a horrifying scene of a screaming woman being raped by five soldiers, one after another. A small boy ran in to try to pull the soldiers off. One of the soldiers grabbed him, turned him around, and made him watch. The boy’s terrified struggle and reaction was tragic, especially when it was contrasted with the faces of rapist-soldiers who had finished with the woman and were standing back laughing. Then the night footage cut to a scene where army troops were using flamethrowers to set huts on fire. Suddenly a naked man ran from the darkness with his hands up, pleading for them to stop. The next instant a soldier turned the flamethrower on him, immolating him in a searing jet of burning gasoline.
“For God’s sake, Anne, I can’t watch any more! Turn it off!” Marten blurted and started to look away. Then— “Wait!” he all but shouted as the night-vision video cut to an older man in army fatigues standing imperially with a small group of heavily armed soldiers at the edge of the battleground watching the proceedings. He was hawk-faced and gray-haired and clearly not a black African like the rest.
“I know him!” Marten said. “He was there when they were interrogating me in Malabo. Who is—?”
In a near perfectly timed response the narrative answered Marten’s query.
“This is Mariano Vargas Fuente, the former Chilean general known as Mariano, once a high-ranking officer in the notorious former Directorate of National Intelligence during the 1973 to 1990 dictatorship of the late General Augusto Pinochet. He is one of the world’s best-known human rights abusers, convicted in absentia of torture and mass murder. Fled war-crimes prosecution and vanished into the jungles of Central America. Is thought to have been recruited by President Tiombe to personally supervise his counterinsurgency program in Rio Muni and Bioko. This is the first known confirmation that he is in Equatorial Guinea.”
Immediately the video cut to a map of Bioko and showed the position of Abba’s forces as they moved north, closing in on Malabo.
“Indicators suggest Tiombe is preparing to flee the country if Abba’s forces continue to gain further ground. Analysts believe that Abba will take control of the government within ten to fourteen days. As of noon tomorrow local time the U.S. embassy will be closed until further notice. All nonessential personnel have been ordered to evacuate. The State Department has issued a warning to all U.S. citizens to leave Equatorial Guinea immediately.”
With that the picture faded and the video ended.
Marten stared at Anne. “You wanted me to see that. Why?”
“I wanted us both to see it. So we can tell the same story to Congressman Ryder. And so that you will trust me the rest of the way. Trust that I want the killing stopped as much as you.”
Marten was silent for a long moment; then he let his eyes find hers. “Does the term ‘all U.S. citizens’ include Striker personnel?”
“Abba’s people are trying to get rid of Tiombe, not us. Our people have been confined to the company compound, which is heavily guarded by SimCo mercenaries. They’re safe.”
“Are they? Let me tell you something. General Mariano knows about the photographs. It’s what they were trying to get from me during the interrogation. Or maybe you knew that.”
Anne shook her head. “No.”
“Just pray to God he doesn’t order his butchers into your company compound looking for them. White’s mercenaries wouldn’t have a chance. And once they fall, God help the drillers, the tech people, the secretaries, the bookkeepers, and all the other Striker and SimCo ‘little people’ I saw in the bar at the Hotel Malabo. Especially if Tiombe’s killers come in with flamethrowers.” Marten paused, anger and outrage eating away at him. “What the hell have you people done in the name of profit?”
Anne said nothing.
“It’s alright, darling,” he said. “Don’t look for an answer. Don’t even try to make one up. Because there is none.”
1:37 P.M.
48
AIR FORCE ONE. STILL SATURDAY, JUNE 5. 8:15 A.M.
President John Henry Harris sat in shirtsleeves listening to Lincoln Bright, his chief of staff, run through the day’s abbreviated appointment schedule: three White House meetings, one of them with the secretary of state just back from meetings in India and China, then helicopter to Camp David and talks with his chief financial advisers about the on going crises in the economy.
The briefing over, Bright left, and the president leaned back to stare out the window, watching as they passed over Lake Ontario and entered American airspace. He’d had an early breakfast with Canadian prime minister Campbell and Mexican president Mayora at the Harrington Lake compound, then immediately departed. In four hours he would be at Camp David to spend the rest of the weekend enmeshed in critical budget details and preparing for a Monday morning meeting with the governors of a dozen states who would each come looking—begging was a better word—for additional fundi
ng beyond what they already had been given.
Still, and for all the importance of the secretary of state’s report and the crises with the economy, other things weighed heavily. A phone call from Joe Ryder in Iraq had come before breakfast with Ryder telling him his fact-finding team had met with an unexpected twist when Hadrian’s Loyal Truex had arrived unannounced, boldly and generously offering to throw the Striker/Hadrian doors and books wide open and inviting Ryder and his colleagues to look over anything they liked. Acting as if, in Ryder’s words, “he had come at the last minute to hide everything in plain sight.” Which apparently he had, because so far they’d found nothing more than they already knew.
Then there had been his morning security briefing, where he’d asked about the situation in Equatorial Guinea and was told that President Tiombe’s army was heavily engaged with the insurgent forces while at the same time committing terrible atrocities against the civilian population under the guise of hunting down rebel leaders. The army’s brutal tactics aside, analysts expected Tiombe’s government to fall within days, and by then Tiombe and his family and staff would have fled the country.
“To go where?” he’d asked.
Reports had been inconclusive, but Tiombe was known to have residences in several parts of the world, Beverly Hills among them. The president’s reaction to that had been simple and drawn a laugh. “I hope to hell he doesn’t do that.” But there was nothing funny about any of it. Immediately he called in Lincoln Bright and instructed his chief of staff to get in touch with Kim Ho, secretary-general of the United Nations, and ask what he could do to press the UN to intervene in the situation in Equatorial Guinea, and then to call Pierre Kellen, president of the International Red Cross, and ask what the United States could do to help on a humanitarian level.
The thing was, no matter how concerned he was about the plight of the Equatorial Guinean people, he knew he dared not show too much personal interest in the war itself because to do so would risk pricking up ears in the national and international intelligence and diplomatic communities. They would be more than curious to know why he had singled out that one area when so many other parts of the African continent were suffering under similar circumstances, and they might well send people to look into it. That was something he couldn’t afford. The last thing he needed was to have covert interests poking deeper into what was going on and risk having one of them come up with the photographs before they were safely in his or Joe Ryder’s hands.
Having such far-reaching power and for so many reasons not being able to draw on it was one of the hells of his office and made the trouble with Marten all the worse. Six weeks earlier he would have sent Hap Daniels, his Secret Service special agent in charge, a man he trusted completely and who knew Marten well, to Berlin to sift through the goings-on. Daniels was canny enough and experienced enough to find a way to let Marten know he was there and where to find him without the police or anyone else learning about it, no matter how deeply Marten was hidden. Once contact was made, Daniels could get him the hell out of there, and then both could go after the photos. But in the those six weeks Daniels had undergone heart bypass surgery, and he was at home on medical leave and in no shape to be working that kind of assignment. David Watson, his replacement, was a likable, able man but one Harris didn’t know well enough to send on a mission that would be delicate at best. Moreover, Marten didn’t know him at all and so would have no reason to come out of hiding even if Watson made himself known. That left no one at all the president could turn to for help.
“Dammit,” Harris swore out loud then glanced at his suit coat thrown over the seat across from him. He’d put it there himself, making sure it was in reach. Tucked into an inside pocket was the thing he’d carried everywhere since he’d left Washington: the cheap slate gray cell phone that was his direct and only connection to Nicholas Marten. That was, if Marten called, because he had no way to contact the throwaway cell phone or phones Marten would be using.
He’d hoped all the while Marten would get in touch with him, but he hadn’t. Probably because of the police, or because he was hurt, or even—he hated to think—dead. Or maybe he was just in a situation where phoning anyone was not possible. Or maybe because he had nothing to tell him. What was the thing he’d said when they’d last spoken? “I’ll call you when I have something to report.”
Whatever the reason, the gray phone remained silent, and the stillness was gut-wrenching. It was more than the urgency to find the photographs, or the gnawing reminder that it was he who had sent Marten to Equatorial Guinea in the first place. The thing was he cared about Nicholas Marten enormously. What they had been through together, barely a year earlier in Spain and the close friendship that had come out of it, made them almost like brothers. More than anything he wanted him out of harm’s way. It made him think what it must be like for a parent of a missing child, imagining the worst and waiting and hoping and praying that the phone at your elbow would suddenly come to life and that your daughter or son would be on the other end with a “Hi, Mom” or “Hi, Dad,” all perky and safe and sounding as if nothing at all had happened.
“Damn it to hell,” John Henry Harris spat out loud to the smooth, indifferent walls of Air Force One’s presidential cabin. Then he stoically reached for a breakdown of the federal budget and went to work.
49
POTSDAM, 6:20 P.M.
Marten, Anne, and Hartmann Erlanger stood in an open field near Erlanger’s van shading their eyes from a late-afternoon sun that at long last had poked through the drizzle and overcast. Their attention was on a twin-engine Cessna 340 as it dropped down through broken clouds, then flew at treetop level until it neared the far end of a private airstrip. Seconds later its landing gear touched the tarmac and it roared past them, giving them a glimpse of its fuselage registration, D-VKRD. The aircraft slowed as it reached the end of the runway, then turned and came back toward them.
“Piston engine. It’s the best I could do, all things considered.” Erlanger crushed a cigarette butt under his heel, then picked it up and put in his pocket. “It will get you wherever you’re going within the parameters you gave me. Maybe not as fast as you would like, but you’ll get there just the same.”
“It’s fine, Hartmann, thank you,” Anne said.
He looked at her the way he had in his study earlier, and she smiled and put a hand to his cheek. Plainly there was a history between them, one they didn’t seem to mind sharing, to a degree at least, with Marten. How profound it was, or if Erlanger’s wife was aware of it, there was no way to know.
The roar of the Cessna’s engines deafened as it neared and came to a stop. Then the pilot shut them down, and for a moment the silence was almost as profound. Almost immediately the chirp of birds and the buzz of insects filtered back. All around was deep forest. The only cuts through it were the airstrip itself and the gravel road they had come in on. Not once had Erlanger brought up the subject of whose property it was, but clearly he had access to it.
The pilot’s door opened, and a woman in a flight suit climbed down. She was blond, maybe thirty-five, and attractive in a matronly sort of way.
“Her name is Brigitte,” Erlanger said. “Tell her where you want to go and she’ll get you there. Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. Neither of you saw me. None of this took place.” Abruptly he turned to Anne, the warmth and tenderness of moments before suddenly gone, replaced instead by a cold professionalism. “Stay away from the old contacts,” he warned. “You got away with it once. For your sake, don’t try it again.” He stared at her for a moment longer, then glanced at Marten and turned and walked to the van. Seconds later he got in and closed the door, then started the engine and drove off.
Never once did he look back.
6:50 P.M.
BERLIN POLICE HEADQUARTERS. 7:05 P.M.
Hauptkommissar Franck took the call on his private cell phone and immediately left the room. Detectives Bohlen and Prosser and the dozen other top investigators with them s
topped what they were doing as he went out, watching in silence as the door closed behind him. They’d spent the last eight hours shoulder to shoulder with the Hauptkommissar in the dark of this high-tech situation room deep inside the building surrounded by rows of computers with floor-to-ceiling monitors sorting through mountains of information provided by officers tracking reports coming in from the field.
Franck had called them there just after ten thirty in the morning when the all but certain capture of Nicholas Marten and Anne Tidrow in the neighborhood near the Friedrichstrasse/Weidendamm Bridge had failed. The Hauptkommissar had faced them angrily and forcefully, dressing them down and citing their failure and his own, clearly and harshly.
“I was put in charge of this operation,” he’d said. “I am responsible for the decisions that failed. The suspects are still at large. Failure a second time is not acceptable. To me, to you, or the people of Berlin and Germany. I hope that is quite clear.”
The effect had been powerful and shaming and embarrassing, putting everyone on edge and spreading through the entire department within minutes. It was why, when he answered his personal cell phone and so abruptly left the room, the people there held their collective breath. Perhaps it was a major breakthrough, a tip from one of the untold number of informants only the Hauptkommissar knew. Perhaps in short order he, and then they, would learn where the suspects were and as quickly mobilize and within the hour bring the entire ordeal to a close.
7:12 P.M.
“I don’t like so many people involved,” Franck stood on the sidewalk outside the building on Platz der Luftbrücke talking on his cell phone, his back to passersby. “It will be a billiard game, you know that, one playing off two, two playing off three, who knows where it stops. Unpredictable, volatile at best, dangerous all around.”