compatriots, were armed with submachine guns, Uzis it looked like, and were clearly cut in the mold of the gunmen he had encountered in the Jaguar the night before. Curiously they did nothing but stand there. Maybe that was their intent, simply to block the exits and make certain he didn’t get away. The fact that they were there and armed meant they had the blessing of the GOE. Something that, in turn, suggested that they, too, were somehow connected to the CIA.
Suddenly he realized something else: White knew Anne and Ryder had gotten out on the last train. That Branco was here meant he and White had communicated. In the process Branco would have learned that Anne and Ryder were gone.
Marten stuck the Glock in his belt and took out the cell phone. He prayed that it would work in here and that Anne was somewhere where she could take a call. Fearfully he punched in the number she’d given him. He let out a breath as he heard it ring through. An instant later she clicked on.
“Don’t go near Ryder’s plane,” he said emphatically.
“White’s people are here. The police let them in. It means the Agency knows you and Ryder are out and is assuming you’re on your way to his plane. Can you arrange for another aircraft? You, not Ryder. They’ll have his phone bugged. Maybe yours, too. Use a pay phone. Call somebody you know in the oil business or some other deep-pockets people you travel with. Can you do that?”
“Then do it. Go somewhere, a park or something, and stay there until it’s ready. When it is, get the hell to it and out of Lisbon.”
“I don’t know about me. It doesn’t matter.” Marten glanced around. Branco and his men hadn’t moved.
“Anne, do as I told you.” Marten was resolute. “We had a lot of fun together. Maybe sometime we will again.” With that he clicked off and slid the phone into his jacket. Then he lifted the Glock, hit the KEY TO TALK button and spoke into the microphone.
“Like I said, Colonel, you first.”
Conor White glanced across the tunnel entrance at Patrice, or what little he could see of him in the dark. Suddenly there was the glint of a light on the rails behind them. Two pinpoints of light were coming down the tunnel in their direction. The automated Metro car Branco had promised. White looked at Patrice, then back down the tunnel. Something didn’t feel right, but he didn’t know what it was. Again came the feeling of impending doom. The otherworldly sense of Marten as a demon come to destroy him came flooding back. He had to be crushed and crushed now. A foot put on his neck and a bullet through his brain.
Marten saw the approaching lights too, then heard White’s voice.
Marten could hear the icy confidence in his voice, the professional soldier anxious to do his murderous work once again. At the same time, he saw the faces of Marita and her medical students. Saw Raisa in her red hair and pink robe. Next came Bioko and the bodies of the native woman and her children, their throats cut, floating in the branches of the dead tree; Father Willy and the young boys clubbed to death by Tiombe’s soldiers; the grotesque photographs of White and Patrice and Irish Jack lunching with General Mariano in the jungle; the soldiers with the flamethrowers and the naked man as he was burned alive. Then the Rossio Metro station and the GOEs as the balaclava-hooded White and his killers ambushed them outside. Agent Grant as he was gunned down on the platform scant moments earlier. Never in his life had he felt such contempt for a human being as he did now for Conor White.
“Make your move, you son of a bitch!” he spat into the microphone as the rail car neared, its approaching headlamps far too bright and garish for the scene. Suddenly a shadow dashed from the tunnel in front of it, jumped up on the platform, and ran across it. He raised the Glock and fired once, then a second time. Both shots missed, his rounds ricocheting off the concrete walls. The train came closer. Suddenly its lights revealed someone crouched in the tunnel entrance. Patrice. An instant later the same lights fell on him. Patrice swung the M-4. Marten hit the ground between the tracks as a burst from the M-4 chewed up the base of the concrete platform where he’d been. Once again he raised the Glock and squeezed the trigger.
The gunshots were ear shattering. Patrice was caught square in the face and chest and toppled backward into the tunnel. A blue arc of electricity sparked as he fell across the third rail. A split second later a burst of 9 mm slugs from White’s MP5 danced over his head, spraying off the tunnel walls. Then the train was on top of him. He pushed down, hugging the ground between the rails. With a nearly silent whoosh the car went over him, inches above his head. In a second he was up and at the edge of the platform. He pulled himself up, then rolled to one side and into deep shadow. Glock at the ready, he got to one knee and looked around. Where the hell was White? Where had his shots come from?
There was a screech of brakes and the train stopped. One man stood inside it, a machine pistol in his hand. The doors slid open and he stepped out.
Kovalenko.
“Get the hell out of the light,” Marten yelled. “You’re going to get killed!”
“Fuck you! Where’s my memory card?”
“I don’t have it!” Marten’s eyes darted over the area. Where was White? Where had he gone? He shifted the Glock to his left hand and raised his right, pushed the KEY TO TALK button, and spoke into the microphone in his sleeve.
“White,” he said softly. “I’m here, near the tunnel. Come get me.” Quickly he shifted the Glock back, holding it in a two-hand grip and slowly moving it back and forth over the area, his eyes alert, looking for any movement at all. He saw nothing but a faintly lit empty station with the bodies of Irish Jack and Agent Grant sprawled barely twenty feet apart and close at hand.
“Tovarich,” Kovalenko said quietly and nodded toward the newspaper kiosk.
Marten moved forward. If White was there, he couldn’t see him. Kovalenko came in from the side, the machine pistol up, his finger on the trigger. Suddenly Marten stopped.
There he was.
Inside the kiosk, his body in a sharp contrast of black and white, apparently sitting on a stool or something like it, staring blankly into the dark of the station.
Marten raised the Glock, unsure what was happening. Kovalenko eased closer. Slowly White turned his head toward Marten.
“He’s dead,” he said quietly. “He’s dead,” he repeated, then looked off once again.
Marten inched forward. What was going on? Was White playing some kind of trick?
“Careful, tovarich,” Kovalenko warned.
“Throw the gun out!” Marten barked.
White didn’t react.
“Throw the gun out! Now!”
Kovalenko looked to the left and saw Carlos Branco coming toward them in the dim light, a Beretta automatic in his hand. His men moved in from either side. All three carried Uzis.
Marten glanced at them, the Glock still trained on Conor White. “Stay back or I’ll
