awake and wired, every bit of him considering what to do about whoever might be following them, and then about Anne herself. No matter what she’d so vociferously said about telling him the truth-about wanting to stop the war, the importance of her father’s memory, even her promise to meet with Joe Ryder once they had the photos-the rest of it was just too iffy: the CIA connections; Erlanger and whoever else had helped them in Berlin; the sudden appearance of the former CIA jungle fighter, Patrice; the hidden transmitter on the plane; her own past as an Agency operative. Who knew what she really believed or where her true loyalties were? Too much was at stake to keep trusting her.
Meaning that it was best to do what he’d threatened before, get rid of her and go off on his own. Have Brigitte land in Malaga as planned. Go into the terminal with Anne, tell her he needed to use the men’s toilet facilities, and then simply disappear, find a way to get the two-hundred-odd miles to Praia da Rocha any way he could. Bus, train, even hitchhike. The 1985 Schengen Agreement had ended border checkpoints in most of continental Europe. The official Berlin police photograph of him had been fuzzy at best, and by now he had a day and a half’s growth of beard. All of which would help in the event his picture was still in the media, or if the Spanish and Portuguese police were on alert. All in all, it might work very well.
And he would have done it. Except for one thing; the Erlanger question.
The thing Anne had refused to reveal about his warning that had made her more intense, troubled, and determined than he’d seen her since they’d met. Whatever it was was a powerful intangible, one he was certain involved some larger truth about Striker and Hadrian and their operation in Equatorial Guinea. Because of it he was extremely hesitant to abandon her; if he did, something of great consequence might slip through his fingers. At least that was what he thought now and chose to believe. What he would do was revert to his original plan, land at Faro and have Anne rent a car, then together make the short drive to Praia da Rocha. Of course, that strategy raised other potential problems, especially if the airports were, as he’d considered, on alert and the authorities were looking not only for him but for her as well. It also made the question of what to do about whoever was tailing them critical.
He thought a moment longer, then unbuckled his seat belt and slid into the empty copilot’s seat next to Brigitte.
“Are we on time and on course?”
“Yes, sir. I estimate we’ll have wheels down in Malaga at a few minutes past five.”
“What’s the weather?”
“Overcast with a low cloud deck.”
“How thick is it?”
“Nine hundred feet, sir.”
“Will it affect our landing?”
“The deck is solid, but no, sir, no problem with the landing.”
He smiled. “Thank you.”
3:57 A.M.
58
SIMCO FALCON, APPROACHING MALAGA, SPAIN.
AIRSPEED 355 MPH.
ALTITUDE, 27,700 FEET. 4:49 A.M.
Conor White hunched forward in his seat. Headset on, his laptop open with a street map of Malaga on the screen, he was listening to Malaga air traffic control. Behind him, Patrice and Irish Jack had laid out their choice of weapons: two nine-and-a-half-inch fixed-blade, partially serrated jungle knives and accompanying nylon sheaths; two compact, lightweight, highly modified M-4 Colt Commando submachine guns with sound and flame suppressors and six 45 mm thirty-round magazines for each-firepower 750 rounds per minute; two Beretta 93R burst-firing 9 mm automatic pistols, with six twenty-round magazines for each. And then there were Conor White’s armaments: a similar nine-and-a-half-inch fixed-blade jungle knife; two modified Heckler & Koch 9 mm MP5 submachine guns with sound and flame suppressors and eight thirty-round magazines, firepower 800 rounds per minute; and one short-barrel SIG SAUER 9 mm semiautomatic handgun with four ten-round magazines that he used as a backup “hide gun,” kept under his jacket in a slim polymer holster at the back of his belt. This was the gun he had used to kill the young Spanish doctor in the farmhouse outside Madrid and, soon afterward, the driver of the hired car, whom he’d shot at point-blank range in the dilapidated barn.
4:52 A.M.
They were ninety miles out. Marten’s Cessna, D-VKRD, had already been cleared to enter the Malaga landing pattern. By White’s calculation, that should put the Cessna on the ground in about fifteen minutes, or approximately 5:07 A.M.
He had one man in the control tower and two in the terminal, one at the entrance from the tarmac, the other at the exit onto the street. A fourth and fifth waited in cars just outside, one near the taxi line, the other near the car rental agencies.
Once Marten landed, the plane would taxi to the terminal area, where he and Anne would disembark. Assuming the Berlin police hadn’t put out a Europe-wide APB for Marten, which would have the Spanish police closely watching arrivals at every airport, the two would simply enter the terminal, walk through the green NOTHING TO DECLARE customs door, and go into the terminal proper. There they would either take a taxi, rent a car from an airport agency, or use some other form of transportation yet to be determined. Anne might even have a car waiting. Whatever the case, once they left the terminal they would be followed by one or both of the men outside-and soon thereafter by himself, Patrice, and Irish Jack traveling in a dark green SUV that would be waiting for them at the edge of the tarmac, an SUV courtesy of Spitfire Ltd., a Madrid-based private security contractor that served most of the Iberian Peninsula-Spain, Portugal, Andorra, Gibraltar, and a tiny French territory in the Pyrenees-and was owned by a former SAS major, one of his closest friends.
For no particular reason, White thought of his father, Sir Edward Raines. For everything he had-money, political and military esteem, legitimate family of wife, daughter, two other sons, three grandchildren-the one thing he did not have was the Victoria Cross, which was the honor White treasured most. It was not only hugely prestigious, it put his name ahead of his father’s in British military history. But while queen and country had proudly and publicly saluted him for it, his father had not. He had been invited to the ceremony but had not come. Nor had he phoned, faxed, e-mailed, or written. It had been a golden opportunity for him to recognize his bastard son without ever saying it. The simplest of gestures. A handshake, a look in the eye, a word of congratulations would have been enough. It was the prize he coveted most of all, but it had not happened.
And now, at this moment, and for a reason he was unable to understand, the lack of recognition pained him more than it ever had in his life. It was a hurt that had been assuaged a hundred times over in combat when the face of the enemy had suddenly become that of his father and he’d struck at it with every ounce of fury he had. It was why he had been so successful in battle. Why he had received the Victoria Cross and the sea of Distinguished Service Order medals. It was why he would succeed again in the hours and minutes immediately ahead, because this time the enemy who would wear the face of Sir Edward Raines would be the person who stood between himself and ruin. Nicholas Marten.
