by Allan Folsom
He sat down at the desk and turned on the lamp, then slid the two BlackBerrys from his jacket pocket, put the one with the blue tape aside, and picked up the other. A deep breath and he punched in a number in England that automatically forwarded the call to Striker general counsel Arnold Moss’s personal BlackBerry in Houston. It rang three times before Moss picked up.
“I thought I’d be hearing from you,” Moss said immediately.
“Where are you?”
“In the office, where else?”
“You alone?”
“Yes.”
Wirth ran a hand through his hair. “Truex has gotten Washington involved. I’m in Lisbon. So is Conor White. Anne and this Nicholas Marten are either on their way or have already arrived. They’re going to meet with Joe Ryder somewhere here tomorrow. Most probably to give him the photographs and have Anne tell him what she knows about our operations. White’s already got an Agency freelancer on board to help stop them.”
“Carlos Branco.”
“How the hell do you know that?” Wirth was startled. “Truex tell you?”
“Newhan Black.”
“Black called you?”
“He wants us out, Sy. He didn’t want to talk to you. Thought I should deliver the news. It only happened a little while ago. It’s why I didn’t call. I wanted to think.”
“Stop thinking.” Wirth shoved back from the desk and stood up. “This is what we’re going to do.”
“You didn’t tell me the Russians were in this.”
“They aren’t anymore.”
“How the hell did they get involved in the—”
“I tried an end run. It didn’t work.” Wirth crossed the room, reached the far side, then turned back. He was angry. At the world. “Not everything pans out, Arnie. In the end you hope you come out a step ahead of even.”
“Sy, leave it alone. We’ve got to cut our losses while we can. Close the whole operation down. Get out of Equatorial Guinea.”
“What’s the matter?” Wirth’s anger flared. “The game gets a little rough and you suddenly start whimpering? Whose side are you on, theirs or ours? I told you a long time ago I wasn’t going to lose the Bioko field. I haven’t changed my mind.”
“Jesus, Sy. The whole thing’s crumbling. The walls are coming down. Black’s given us the opportunity to walk away. He’ll protect us. We have to do just that.”
“Arnie, listen to me.” Wirth was emphatic. “We’re going to execute what you and I discussed in Houston. Joe Ryder’s due here in the morning. I’m staying at the same hotel he is and am going to request a meeting with him. Just the two of us. He’ll see me if for no other reason than the Iraq situation. I plan to tell him exactly what he’s going to find when he gets the photos, then turn it right back on Truex. Tell Ryder it was all his game, his and Conor White’s, one we knew nothing about. We had no idea that they were helping to arm the revolution until we heard about the photographs.
“Their plan all along seems to have been to covertly expand their influence in West Africa by using us as cover while they backed Abba and his people, giving them whatever they needed to overthrow Tiombe. Something they were certain Abba could do if he had the weapons. Then suddenly the photos came into play and a whole new enterprise presented itself, one worth hundreds of millions if not billions.”
Again Wirth crossed the room. “All they had to do was get hold of the pictures and exploit them. Play Striker as the bad guy who ordered it done. Make it look as if we had backed the overthrow of the country for our own benefit. If they did it right, the exposure would kill Striker publicly and politically, and we’d have to pull out, forfeiting our leases.” He walked across the room once more and then again.
“In the chaos afterward, Truex would convince Abba that he had no experience finding and extracting oil. With Abba’s blessing, he would resurrect the leases in Hadrian’s name with the promise that he’d find someone who did have that experience, first and foremost the Russians, who’d been hovering there the whole time. Then he’d sell the leases to them for an enormous fee and leave, staying lily-white in the process.
“The trouble was, they didn’t have the photos but they knew who did, and they came to Lisbon to get them at any cost whatsoever. They hired a freelancer named Carlos Branco to take care of Anne and Marten and recover them when they went to meet with Ryder, kill Ryder, too, if necessary. I found out what was going on and confronted White and tried to stop him. He refused and threatened to kill me if I said anything or got in the way. That was when I knew I had to go to Ryder myself. He doesn’t have to know anything about Black or the Agency. They’d deny it anyway if it came up.”
“Sy, you’re out of your mind. Don’t touch it! Stay the hell away from Joe Ryder!” Moss warned in alarm and anger. “Black’s given us the green light to leave cleanly and quietly. He’ll let SimCo, even Hadrian, take the fall, and then plug in another U.S. oil company to pick up the pieces. He’s not stupid, he won’t lose the Bioko field, it’s too damn important. So forget Joe Ryder and get the hell out of there. Now. Tonight. Walk away from it. Just walk away.”
“Arnie.” Wirth kept pacing, not even aware of it. In his mind he was in Houston and face-to-face with his general counsel, a man he saw now as little more than an employee. “I run Striker Oil, not you. I’m the one who brought the company to where it is. I’m the one who decided to take the chance and explore Equatorial Guinea and then negotiated the long-term leases with Tiombe’s people. I’m also the same fucking guy who told you from the start he was not going to lose the Bioko field. Not to the Agency, the Russians, or anybody else. Newhan Black doesn’t want to talk to me, then fuck him. You call him and tell him just what I’ve told you and what I’m going to tell Joe Ryder.
“You’re right when you say Black’s not stupid and the find is far too strategic for him to risk. Still, he can’t chance having the photos get out, so he’ll let Branco, White, and his men get rid of Anne and Marten, then take the pictures and fade into the woodwork. Not long afterward, somebody they all know and trust will show up and they’ll disappear. Just like that. White, his gunmen, Branco, and the photos. That same day or maybe the next, Truex will go down, an accident of some kind, and the Bioko field will remain the legal property of the AG Striker Company. Much easier for the Agency that way. After all, we’re the oil company with the long-term leases. The others were just hired gunmen. Hired gunmen are dispensable. Long-term leases for an ocean of oil are not.”
“Sy, you’re crazy to think you can pull this off! You’re playing with fire.”
“I am the fire, Arnie. I’ll call you after I meet with Joe Ryder.”
9:46 P.M.
86
9:52 P.M.
The rain was everything. Off-and-on showers had been forecast for the next few days and were expected to begin after midnight. But just after dark a storm front moved in and a steady rain began to fall. To Marten it was serendipitous, and he used it as an excuse to go out after Anne.
He’d found an umbrella stand in a cubbyhole near the apartment’s front door with three large umbrellas tucked into it. Several hats and caps had been in a nearby closet. As with almost everything else, and in a most thorough way, Raisa Amaro had provided her guests with solid protection against nature. Now, with the Glock automatic in his waistband and using the night and weather to help veil his movements, he ventured out.
Umbrella held overhead, jacket collar turned up, a bucket hat borrowed from the closet pulled over his ears and several-day growth of beard adding to his prayer that neither a passing police patrol nor White’s people, however many of them there might be, would recognize him, at least initially, he let Raisa’s front door close behind him, then crossed Rua do Almada and went into the now deserted park.
________
Six minutes later he crossed Rua da Flores, leaving the Bairro Alto district and entering the Chiado section, backtracking the way he and Anne had come. It was the only thing he could do considering that neithe
r of them had been in Lisbon before today. His guess was that she had to have seen something in passing that caught her eye, a place she felt she could retreat to later. For what purpose he had no idea whatsoever.
Her fear of the CIA seemed to be at the core of everything. But what she thought she could do about it somewhere out here on a rainy Sunday night in a city she barely knew mystified him. Yet whatever she was so intent on doing was, as he’d told her, beside the point if she ended up in the custody of the police or dead at the hands of Conor White. Still, concerned about her as he was and as angry with her as he’d been, at another time and place he might have let it ride, have let her take her chances and get whatever it was out of her system while he stayed in the apartment riding herd on the photographs and keeping out of sight himself. But he no longer had that luxury. Not now, not after President Harris had so compellingly stirred the pot.
Twenty minutes earlier, and still in the apartment, he’d used his dark blue throwaway cell phone to call Harris—at Camp David or the White House or wherever he was—on his own throwaway cell. There had been no answer. He’d tried again to no avail. Then, seconds later, the apartment’s phone had rung. It startled him and he hesitated. Finally he picked up, sure it was either Anne or Joe Ryder.
“It’s me,” an unfamiliar voice said.
“Who is me?” he said warily.
“Cousin Jack. I was in a meeting when you called. I’m in another room using a laptop with a special voice-filtering IP service that’s very difficult to intercept.”
Marten relaxed. “You wanted me to let you know when we got here. I was waiting for Ryder’s call. I thought maybe this was it.” He made no mention of Anne, just let the president assume she was there with him.
“He’s still in Rome. You may not hear from him until tomorrow morning.” Immediately the president’s demeanor became more serious. “The Portuguese police have found the body of the German policeman, Emil Franck.”
“I know.”
“I asked for a detailed report on it. He was shot once in the back of the head. Then his body was put into a car and driven to a beach somewhere near Portimão where the car was set on fire. No mention was made of this Russian, Kovalenko, you talked about.”
“I wouldn’t think so. He’s very good at what he does.”
“When you called from the bookshop you told me Moscow knew about the Bioko field. If they already knew, why was he with the German?”
“The photographs. Franck was coming after them for the CIA. The Russians knew about them, but they didn’t know where they were. They hoped he would lead them to the prize. Franck was a double agent. He had no choice but to let Kovalenko come along.”
Marten heard the president hesitate, as if he’d suddenly had an even more troubling thought. “The photographs. You do have them.”
“Yes. He let me keep them, probably hoping the police would find me and think they were the reason I murdered Theo Haas.”
“He came all that way for the pictures, killed the policeman, and then let you keep them?” The president was incredulous.
“Not exactly.”
“What the devil does that mean?”
“Kovalenko took the memory card from the camera that was used to photograph them. There’s far more damning stuff on it than just the pictures that were printed. A lot more.”
“So, in essence, he does have them.”
“He thinks he does. But when he gets to where he’s going, plugs in the card, and brings the pictures up on a screen, he’s going to find he’s got a whole lot of pictures of half-naked young women Theo Haas secretly photographed while they were sunbathing on the beach near his house. I switched cards on him. I have the original. No one knows but you, not even Anne. Both are locked away in the room safe here.”
Marten could almost see the president grin. Then abruptly he spoke, his voice even more somber than before.
“What the police haven’t made public is that you and Ms. Tidrow are the prime suspects in Franck’s murder.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. They know we were in Praia da Rocha this morning. They don’t want to make it public and drive us underground, then have us get away, like in Berlin.”
“This is different than Berlin, Nick. You’re now not just a murderer but a cop killer. So is she. Raisa Amaro is a very smart, very gifted and trusted woman. She’ll keep anyone away from where you are. So both of you, stay right there. Don’t do anything until you hear from Joe Ryder.”
“Right.” Marten still said nothing about Anne leaving.
“Not just right, crucial. I finally saw the CIA briefing video from Equatorial Guinea. I was sickened as you were. I’m meeting with the secretary-general of the UN tomorrow to see what we can do to intervene or at least bring in humanitarian aid. But there’s something else, and why we have to get you both out of there as quickly as possible and before the police or anyone else finds you.
“We need the photographs and whatever else is on the camera’s memory card as hard evidence. But we also need the sworn testimony of Anne Tidrow to establish beyond question that Striker Oil, the Hadrian Company, and SimCo conspired to arm the revolutionaries for their own gain.”
“I’m not sure she knew what was going on at the time.”
“Maybe not, but she certainly knows enough about the inner workings of Striker and its relationship with Hadrian to give the attorney general’s office a solid base to work from. Whatever she can give us is more than we have.
“One more thing. You said Franck was a double agent and the Russians knew it.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know if they have seen the CIA video?”
“They have. Kovalenko told me they intercepted it and copied it.”
Marten heard the president sigh in despair. “That seriously exacerbates what we’ve worried about from the start. If the pictures are made public and at the same time the Russians leak the video, I can guarantee you very few in this world, our own citizens included, will see the U.S. as anything but a murderous exploiter who has used the mercenary forces of an American oil company to further its own political ends. We will then be in the extremely delicate position of having to prove our innocence beyond any doubt whatsoever to an outraged global public. A feat that will be all but impossible without Ms. Tidrow’s presence and testimony.
“There’s something else, too. The very real possibility that Kovalenko or agents working with him will come after you again once they discover you’ve switched memory cards. They will want the real one. So I repeat. Stay where you are and wait for Ryder’s call. He’ll be protected by his own RSO security detail, and the CIA will leave it at that. They’ll get you out and onto Ryder’s plane. We’ll take it from there.” The president hesitated, then finished. “I got you into this pickle, Nick, and I’m doing everything I can to get you out. But unfortunately I can’t guarantee success. Most of it’s going to be up to you, and Joe Ryder and his people.”
“I realize that.”
“Then, as I said before, good luck and Godspeed. And keep Ms. Tidrow close.”
“Yes, sir, I will,” Marten said. The president clicked off.
Marten let out a breath
and stared
at the empty room.
10:10 P.M.
Lost in thought, still rattled by the president’s directive and his own guilt at letting Harris believe Anne was safely with him, Marten stepped blindly from a curb. Immediately there was a flash of headlights and a loud blare of horn, and he jumped back as a city bus passed inches from his nose. He swore out loud, then ducked low under his umbrella and crossed the street, moving deeper into the Chiado district looking for any sign of Anne.
For all the rain and dark and the fact that it was Sunday night, it was still summer, and even though most shops were closed, here and there he found an open café, a bar, a restaurant, a specialty shop selling souvenir T-shirts, coffee mugs, key chains, cheap cameras, and the like. She had to be in one of them because the
re was nothing else. But which one? And how far had she gone before she found what she wanted? Whatever that was.
10:13 P.M.
87
10:18 P.M.
The text message was sent from CIA Chief of Station/Lisbon Jeremy Moyer to Carlos Branco’s BlackBerry in an electronic heartbeat.
Striker Oil American Express credit card used at Hotel Lisboa Chiado, Rua Garrett, 9:57 P.M.
10:19 P.M.
The same message was forwarded by Branco to Conor White. And, after a moment’s hesitation, from White to Sy Wirth.
10:20 P.M.
Wirth had a one-word reply.
Respond!
10:24 P.M.
Nicholas Marten walked out of Casanova, a small blue-and-white-tiled restaurant permeated with the distinctive odor of delicately seasoned roast pork. Raising his umbrella against the rain, he walked on, his eyes scanning either side of the street for pedestrians. He’d counted twenty tables inside Casanova; six had still been occupied. None by Anne. Describing her to the English-speaking head waiter proved fruitless. No one resembling her had been in the restaurant all evening, let alone within the last hour. A quick use of the toilet facilities toward the kitchen area in the rear—a covering act to see if the restaurant had a second or private dining room—had been unproductive as well. The place was small. What you saw when you entered was what there was.
10:35 P.M.
A visit to a café further down the street and then a bar and shortly afterward a souvenir shop had had the same result. No Anne, nor anyone looking like her, had either come or gone within the past hour.
He moved on, the wet streets reflecting the vivid colors of lighted store signs and the headlights of passing traffic. By now he was walking along Rua Garrett and nearly out of the Chiado district. Ahead, and down a steep cobblestoned street—he recalled from earlier—and he would be in the even more densely populated Baixa quarter. He was about to turn the corner and start down when two things came to mind at almost the same moment.