would she please pull her people out of the Ritz and reassign them.
Which was precisely what he did, calling her as he approached the embassy, explaining it all and closing with “If there was a sudden security threat, he didn’t mention it. My office has received nothing to raise the alert level any higher than it already was for his visit. Maybe it’s political. Maybe it has to do with Ryder’s commission. Maybe he’s going back to Iraq. I don’t know. It’s one of those things. Maybe one day we’ll find out.”
With that he clicked off, took a deep breath, and tried not to think of what was about to happen.
HOSPITAL DA UNIVERSIDADE. 11:08 A.M.
Special agents Grant and Birns stood guard in the hallway outside the examination room while Joe Ryder, Marten, and Anne went over Father Willy Dorhn’s Bioko photographs one by one. Ryder had already been told about the CIA briefing video and seen the 35 mm negatives of the memorandum. Since the document pages were too small to read without magnification, he could only listen to Anne’s detailed explanation of what was on them and accept her assurance that once full-sized prints were made everything would quite legible. In his mind there was no doubt of the veracity of what she was saying. Her tone of voice, her facial expression, the way she held herself, the involuntary clenching and unclenching of her hands told him, as much as the document itself, the personal hurt she was going through in revealing it. Not to mention the legal jeopardy she was putting herself in; she had, after all, stolen a top secret government document, and she sat on the board of directors of what very likely would become a federally indicted company, with its leaders quite possibly brought before an international court charged with crimes against humanity.
The photographs were self-explanatory, as was Marten’s description of other photos on the camera’s memory card that had been lost to the Russian agent Kovalenko. Those showing Conor White with the Chilean war criminal Mariano had been of particular interest, especially when tied to the CIA briefing video that he knew could be subpoenaed. That Kovalenko had killed the German policeman, Franck, and taken the memory card posed another concern because it raised the specter of Russian political interference in Equatorial Guinea, even high-stakes blackmail if Moscow threatened to make the photographs public.
Marten had still not told anyone but President Harris that the real memory card was in his possession and that the one he’d given to Kovalenko was harmless. They were far from being out of the woods yet, and he wasn’t about to give up the last piece of evidence when it was neither safe nor necessary. To that end he would keep custody of it until they were out of the country and the other evidence was secure and protected. Even then there was only one person he would give it to, the president himself.
11:10 A.M.
There was a knock on the door, it opened, and Birns stepped into the room. Mario Gama was with him.
“There is a man wearing the white jacket of Raisa Amaro’s laundry in the reception room,” Mario said. “He told the receptionist he was to ask for Ms. Tidrow or Mr. Marten and tell them he has a truck waiting. She referred him to me.”
“He asked for us by name?” Marten said flatly.
“Yes, sir.”
“He was to have waited until we came out. I’m not sure he even knew our names.”
“Maybe he did know and simply forgot his instructions. He came in to make sure nothing went wrong.”
“Maybe.” Marten looked at his watch. “He’s early. He was to have been here at eleven fifteen.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Ryder said. “Put the photographs back together. Let’s get out of here.”
Anne felt her danger antenna come up. She looked at Marten.
He was already moving, nodding to Agent Grant in the hallway and closing the door. Now he looked to Gama. “Do you know the laundry’s telephone number?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Would you please call and ask for Raisa. When you get her, hand the phone to me.”
Mario’s eyes darted cautiously around the room. Then he lifted a BlackBerry from his pocket and punched in a number. They could hear it ring through; then someone picked up and a male voice answered in Portuguese.
“Yes.”
“Raisa Amaro, please.”
There was a pause and then,
Gama looked to Marten and covered the mouthpiece. “He wants to know who’s calling.”
“Tell him a personal friend.”
Gama nodded and did as Marten asked.
Twenty seconds passed, then thirty. Gama looked to the others and shrugged. “He must have gone to get her.”
Marten and Anne exchanged glances. Marten looked back to Gama. “Where is the laundry truck parked? Which door did the man come in through?”
“The front door. His truck is parked in front.”
Marten felt the hairs stand up on his neck. Immediately he turned to Gama. “Click off.”
He did, and Marten asked him another question. “Can you find out if an ambulance was called to the laundry in the last half hour?”
Concern spread over Gama’s face. “Yes, sir.”
“Please do it.”
“Yes, sir.” The security director said, with a nod, then turned away, punched a number into his BlackBerry, and waited.
Marten looked to the others. “Ten to one it was the police who answered the phone. If so, they were tracing the call. That was the reason for the delay. It also means that White found out about Raisa, learned where she worked, and went there. The driver out front is one of his men.”
“Thank you,” Gama said in Portuguese and then clicked off the phone, his expression grim. “Emergency medical vehicles were called there by the police. Four people were found shot to death. Three men and a woman.”
“Raisa,” Anne mouthed.
Marten looked at her and nodded faintly, then turned back to Gama. “What did you tell the driver when he asked about us?”
“That I didn’t know anything and would see what I could find out. For some reason he didn’t look like a laundry worker.”
Immediately Marten’s eyes went to Ryder. “I presume your men brought friends along.”
“They’re armed, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Again Marten looked at Gama. “There are security cameras covering the front and rear entries. I saw them when I came in. Are there more?”
“Yes.”
