by Allan Folsom
“It’s a precaution, nothing more.”
Debra Wynn nodded; again came the courteous smile. “Then, thank you.”
“We do what we can.” Moyer nodded and walked off.
She watched him leave the bar area and go out into the lobby. His driver met him there, and they left.
Moyer had said he’d come there to look around and to offer some assistance. Look around? He’d been stationed in Lisbon for more than three years. The Ritz was an international gathering spot, a place he’d been in and out of countless times. The assistance he was offering could as easily have been offered over the phone. The real truth was he’d come there to meet her in the venue where Joe Ryder would be staying for the purpose of gaining information. The “looking around” had been primarily into her eyes when he told her he wanted to place one of his operatives among hers. There had been no question that she would accept his offer, but he’d wanted to see if she knew more about Ryder’s visit than she was telling. Clearly something was going on and the CIA was involved. Whatever it was, it would require a security clearance and pay scale far higher than hers. So what he’d seen in her eyes would have been what he expected. Nothing. Whatever Congressman Ryder’s visit was really about, she didn’t know. And didn’t want to.
5:52 P.M.
80
SIMCO FALCON 50. 5:57 P.M.
Conor White looked at Patrice and Irish Jack in the seats across from him. They were calm and relaxed, patiently waiting for the plane to touch down and the next act to begin. White wasn’t quite as comfortable or composed.
Abruptly he shifted his weight and looked out the window as the chartered jet began its descent into Lisbon, a city he’d been to a dozen times or more—but never in a situation like this, where his entire future rode on luck. He had no doubt whatsoever that soon, maybe within hours, the pictures would be made public and, in the hands of the Russians, in a most demonic way. Meaning that aside from the terrifying specter of a superpower showdown in Equatorial Guinea, what he had feared from the beginning would finally come to pass—that his career, and therefore his life, were essentially over. The blame he put fully on Sy Wirth and his stupid, colossal meddling. If it would have accomplished anything at all, he would have killed him right there in the Faro hotel room. But there had been no point because things were beyond the control of either of them. Instead he’d simply watched as Wirth, in what could best be described as a violent stupor, picked up one of two BlackBerrys on the room’s writing desk and started to call Loyal Truex in Iraq to tell him what had happened. At the same time, the other BlackBerry sounded. Wirth looked at the one in his hand—one with a small piece of blue tape on the bottom—and, seeming to realize it was not the device he had intended to use, quickly put it in his pocket and answered the other. Truex had been on the line, excited and at the same time agitated. At that moment things began to happen, fast.
The first part was information, most of it coming from Truex.
Joe Ryder had suddenly been called away from a close inspection of the records division of Hadrian’s central facility in Baghdad. Less than thirty minutes later his plane had taken off for Rome, the first leg of a hurried return trip to Washington. But Rome, Truex had learned, was not his final destination in Europe. Lisbon was. The purpose of his Lisbon visit? A courtesy call on Lisbon’s mayor. It was bullshit. A man like Ryder, who’d gone all the way to Iraq for a hands-on inspection of the Striker and Hadrian operations there, accompanied by several members of his commission, an audit team, and their support staff, and who then suddenly abandoned everyone and everything to hurry back to Washington alone and for reasons unknown, does not stop to make a courtesy call on the mayor of Lisbon. Clearly he was going to the Portuguese capital for some other and very specific reason. And since Marten and Anne had been in Portugal that day, it was more than reasonable to presume that the three were planning to meet somewhere there. That same logic taken a step further, especially in light of the haste of Ryder’s departure from Baghdad, suggested that it was possible, even probable, that they had somehow snatched the photographs from under the Russian noses and were readying to turn them over to Ryder. It was equally probable that Anne—almost certainly to avoid prosecution—had agreed to brief Ryder on the Striker/Hadrian/SimCo arrangement in Equatorial Guinea and the Striker/Hadrian dealings in Iraq. Either or both reasons made it a meeting neither Striker nor Hadrian could afford to have take place.
For Conor White it was a defining moment. For the second time in hours he’d been given a massive injection of hope that the photographs might still be retrievable. With it came the feeling that maybe his torment would, at long last, be over and that finally everything would be alright. It was the kind of sentiment he’d so often longed for as a boy. That no matter what he had done or what had happened, his father would somehow manage to be there, to put his arms around him and hold him and tell him everything would be alright. That he was there for him, and always would be. Even if it was a lie. Just to see him and hear it and feel it even once would have brought untold joy.
Less than an hour after Truex’s call, they’d lifted off from Faro for Lisbon. Once again, Wirth had taken the Striker corporate Gulfstream, leaving the tri-engine Falcon 50 to White and the others, with Wirth promising to update them with more information the moment he received it. Ten minutes after takeoff White’s BlackBerry had sounded. Wirth already had it.
“Ryder is staying at the Four Seasons Ritz,” he’d said. “He’ll arrive sometime tomorrow morning. His dinner with the Lisbon mayor is at eight in the evening. I don’t have a location yet. A man named Carlos Branco will meet you on the tarmac in Lisbon at Air Terminal Two in the civil aviation area and take you to an apartment on Rua do São Filipe Néri, which is close to the Four Seasons. Go there and wait until you hear from me. Branco is a freelancer, a total professional. He’ll be working with you. It was set up by Truex, not me, so trust him. We’ll get out of this yet, Conor. We’ll look back and laugh.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Wirth,” he’d replied flatly. “We’ll look back and laugh.”
6:05 P.M.
White heard a thump as the Falcon’s landing gear came down. Then it banked and came around on final approach. As it did he could see the tarmac and terminals at Portela Airport and then Lisbon itself. Down there somewhere, among the tree-lined avenues and city squares, beneath the acres of red-tile rooftops—either now or sometime later tonight, certainly by tomorrow when Ryder arrived—would be Nicholas Marten and Anne and, he prayed, the photographs. All he had to do was find them.
PORTELA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, TERMINAL 2. 6:19 P.M.
“Conor White?” a slim, fortyish, dark-haired man wearing a Hawaiian shirt and blue jeans met them on the tarmac as they came down the Falcon’s stairway.
“Yes,” White said cautiously.
“My name is Carlos Branco. I have a car waiting.”
6:30 P.M.
A metallic gray BMW 520 touring car left the terminal and passed through the civil aviation security gate. Moments later it turned onto Avenida Cidade do Porto and headed into the city.
White sat in the right rear seat, with Patrice between him and Irish Jack. Branco rode up front next to the driver. He’d taken them directly to the car and waited as they put their luggage and two dark green and yellow sports equipment bags into the trunk. As they drove off, he mentioned something about the weather and rain showers that were due over the next few days. After that, they rode in silence.
6:38 P.M.
As Branco’s driver brought them into the city in a swirl of traffic, White began to feel a surge of energy. With it came a churning of thought, and he began to wonder where in the city a meeting between Anne and Marten and Joe Ryder might take place, and how, and at what point, they might best deal with it.
6:52 P.M.
The BMW entered the Marquês de Pombal roundabout at the top of the lush, tree-lined Avenida da Liberdade. Immediately the driver swung up the hill past the green of the city’s s
prawling Eduardo VII Park.
“There,” Branco said, a long, narrow finger pointing out the window to the right.
Directly above them and looking out over the city like some modern, box-shaped sentinel was the place where Ryder would be staying. The Four Seasons Hotel Ritz.
6:54 P.M.
81
BAIRRO ALTO, THE UPPER TOWN. 7:12 P.M.
It was still nearly three full hours until sunset. Nicholas Marten stood in a shaft of sunlight at the far end of a small, leafy park, one foot on a stone bench, the envelope with Father Willy’s photographs tucked under his left arm, Kovalenko’s Glock 9 mm automatic in his waistband under his jacket. Anne sat on another bench some thirty feet away casually feeding a congregation of pigeons from a box of crackers she’d bought at a variety store in the tourist-jammed lower old-town Baixa district fifteen minutes earlier. Around them were a dozen or so others—chatting, reading, playing cards, people just enjoying the long summer evening. Whether they were visitors or locals it was hard to tell, but whoever they were, none seemed to be paying either Anne or Marten any attention.
Directly across from the park was Rua do Almada, a narrow cobblestoned street and a block of four-and five-story apartment buildings. Number 17 was the third building down. Its second-through fourth-floor apartments had floor-to-ceiling windows that opened onto narrow balconies decorated with ornamental iron railings. The fifth, or top, floor had no balconies or railings at all, only large windows that, like those on the other floors, looked out onto the street below and the park across from it where they were.
7:16 P.M.
Marten glanced at Anne and nodded toward number 17. She responded with a slight shake of the head, then went back to feeding the pigeons. They were hot and tired from the nearly ninety-minute trek they had made across the city from where Stump Logan had dropped them. Their destination, hopefully with a message from Joe Ryder waiting for them, was only feet away across the cobblestones. But for all the good it did, they might as well have still been in Praia da Rocha. Dangerous as it was for them to stay out in the open, Anne’s sense was that it was even more foolhardy to simply walk up to the front door and knock on it without first surveying the building and its surroundings.
“See what vehicles come and go,” she’d said as they neared. “If they pass by more than once. Who goes in and out. If someone is watching from the windows or from the windows next door or from farther up or down the street. If a pedestrian or someone on a bicycle goes past, taking special interest in the building as they do. Look carefully at the people in the park. See if any of them are watching from there.”
“Anne.” Marten’s reply had been impatient and emphatic. “Only one person knows we’re coming, Raisa Amaro, and she’s inside. We have to get off the street.”
“Not yet, darling,” she’d said with finality and crossed into the park to feed the pigeons and watch the building. For how long, she hadn’t said.
Frustrated, indignant, yet knowing he couldn’t very well grab her by the hair and drag her into the building, Marten had reluctantly followed, taking up the position on the bench where he was now.
Their journey to Rua do Almada had begun the moment Stump Logan drove off. Following his directive, they’d gone to the nearby main bus depot, Terminal Rodoviário de Lisboa, crossed into the bus arrival/departure area, and entered through the ARRIVING PASSENGER doors. Taxis and public transportation were immediately available outside the main entrance on the far side, but Marten had been hesitant to use either for fear of leaving a trail that could be followed. Instead he’d bought a street map from a terminal vendor and they’d left on foot.
Ever wary of police patrols and deliberately trying to avoid appearing as a couple someone might remember later, they’d kept to opposite sides of the streets and avenues as they moved deeper into the city. With little sleep and even less to eat since they’d left Berlin, the walk had seemed interminable. The last twenty minutes especially had been a slow, lingering ramble through the crowded Baixa quarter, with Anne, on the far sidewalk, acting more like a tourist—poking her head into this store and that—than someone trying to get to the safe house on Rua do Almada.
Finally Marten had abandoned caution, crossed over, and taken her by the arm. Then, map in hand like a vacationer, he led her up a steep cobblestone street into the fashionable Chiado district and its rich blend of outdoor cafés, antique stores, and stylish shops. If Anne had had any intention of lingering there, Marten hadn’t let her—with the single exception of a small, elegant, five-star hotel on Rua Garrett that she’d gone into, to, as she’d said, “use the loo.”
Ten minutes more and up another sharply inclined street and they entered the Bairro Alto, the upper town, where Rua do Almada was. Another five and they entered the park across from number 17 where they were now, and where they had been for almost fifteen minutes of waiting and watching.
Marten looked at Anne again. She ignored him. This time it was enough. He walked over and leaned in close. “Nobody’s gone in, nobody’s come out. Not a single person has walked by. No vehicle has passed more than once. No bicycles, either. It’s time we go in. Now.”
Immediately she got up and walked a little way off. The pigeons followed; so did Marten. He started to say something, but she stopped him.
“Congressman Ryder’s coming to Lisbon,” she said quietly without looking at him. “That means the U.S. Embassy will have been informed. Which means the CIA/Lisbon chief of station will know.”
“He might know he’s coming, but he won’t know why.”
Abruptly she turned to look at him. “Don’t you suppose that by now he knows we were in Praia da Rocha and just might suspect that since Mr. Ryder is all-of-sudden coming to Lisbon we just might be too, and for some reason other than seeing the sights?” She stared at him a half beat, then went back to feeding the pigeons.
“Erlanger, in Berlin,” she said, still without looking at him, “was CIA. You wanted to know about his manner at the airstrip in Potsdam. He was trying to warn me that the Agency was actively involved and whatever I was doing I’d better stop. And then we found out that Hauptkommissar Franck was an operative. Conor White’s friend Patrice was CIA and maybe still is.”
“Yes, and maybe White is, too. We’ve been through that.”
“Nicholas—” Something caught her eye and she looked off. A well-dressed elderly couple sitting nearby was watching them intently. She smiled politely, then gently turned her back to them and looked to Marten.
“It all has to do with the photographs,” she said quietly and almost offhandedly, as if she were simply discussing the weather or where they might go for dinner. “If Erlanger knew about them, I don’t know. But clearly Franck did. He brought Kovalenko along because he had to, but he would have killed him afterward, the same as he planned to do with us.”
“You’re saying the Agency wants to make sure Ryder doesn’t get them.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think they would particularly delight in the idea of someone—one of their own former operatives, or an expat American landscape architect, or even an esteemed U.S. congressman—having graphic proof that a private security contractor conspired to provoke a revolution in a third world country, especially one that resulted in the deaths of thousands of its citizens, to benefit an American oil company. Franck’s job was to kill us after he got the photographs. What makes you think that order isn’t still in place?
“The Agency has long arms, Nicholas, and very good hearing.” She nodded across the street toward number 17. “What if they’re already in there waiting? Or will be told where we are once we go inside? Who knows who this Raisa Amaro is, anyway?”
Just then the elderly couple walked slowly past, the gentleman walking with a cane and tipping his hat as he passed, his wife holding his arm.
Marten waited for them to move out of hearing, then abruptly turned to Anne. “Joe Ryder’s expecting to contact us through what
ever means Ms. Amaro has set up for us. We try to reach him now—if we can reach him—and tell him our fears, he’ll want to change his plans. If he does, the people with him will want to know why, and he’ll have to tell them something, which can only make things worse when he tries to find a way to connect with us. We have to take the chance that your Lisbon chief of station, Sy Wirth, and White and his friends don’t yet know we’re here or, if they do, where we are.”
Anne looked off. She didn’t like it at all.
In the next instant a distinctive white-and-blue car with a thin red stripe running the length of it drove slowly past. A single word was painted on it—POLICIA. Seconds later two motorcycle units followed, their helmeted, uniformed riders carefully surveying the park as they went by. A moment of stillness followed, and then two more motorcycle units came by, this time on the far side of the park.
“May I suggest another storm front?” Marten asked quietly. “The very real possibility that Franck’s body has been found and that the authorities are keeping it quiet until the Portuguese police and maybe their counterparts in Spain, France, and Italy have been alerted and given the order to locate and take into custody the two persons the Hauptkommissar was investigating for the murder of Theo Haas. The same two persons the police know he followed to a beach house in Praia da Rocha that was owned by a certain Jacob Cádiz.”
Anne smiled thinly. “You’re saying we should take a great leap of faith and introduce ourselves to this Raisa Amaro as quickly as possible.”
“Sooner, darling. Sooner.”
7:34 P.M.
82
7:45 P.M.
“There are just you three, no more?”
“Yes.”
“A car and driver will be outside whenever you have need. Supplementary transportation is available with a ten-minute-or-less response time.”
“Good.”
“I know you are armed. Will you need additional armaments?”