The Hadrian Memorandum

newspapers. I have to think that by now your friend the Hauptkommissar will have spread your name and picture all over the EU. Maybe mine, too.”

Marten ignored her protest. “After the bus we’re going to need a car.”

“Are you going to rent it or steal it?”

“You are going to rent it.”

“Me?”

Marten glanced at her. “I can’t risk using a credit card and having my name show up in some kind of commercial data bank,” he said quietly. “Anyone looking for me would know exactly where I am.”

“What about anyone looking for me?”

“We’ll have to take that chance.”

Again came the indignant look. “We will?”

“Unless you want to walk. Where we’re going isn’t exactly around the corner.”

They were still in the crowd when they moved past the police and the sniffer dog and out into bright sunshine. Two police cars were parked on the far side of a center island directly across from them, with three uniformed officers standing nearby chatting and keeping their eyes on the terminal entrance.

“There are car rental agencies here at the airport.” Anne moved a step ahead of Marten. “It’s crazy to risk being seen on a bus.”

“True. But not so crazy when one considers that airport rental agencies and taxicabs are the first place anyone following us will look.” Marten nodded toward a city bus as it pulled to the curb not twenty yards in front of them. “They’ll look but they won’t find. By the time they think to check the agencies in the city we’ll be long gone.” He glanced back at the police. “I hope.”

“To where?”

Marten shook his head. “Not yet, darling.”

“You still don’t trust me, do you?”

“No.”

7:10 A.M.

65

FARO, MONTENEGRO DISTRICT. STILL SUNDAY, JUNE 6. 8:12 A.M.

Nicholas Marten stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked across the street to a small tree-lined park and sat down on a bench. In the distance church bells tolled for Sunday Mass. Somewhere nearby was the faint odor of cultivated garlic. Marten looked around for the decorative plant, curious as to what variety it was and where it was. Farther down two elderly men played chess under a large almond tree that he estimated was at least forty years old.

For a moment he did nothing but sit there. Finally he turned and looked across the narrow street behind him to the Auto Europe rental car office where Anne was, and had been for more than ten minutes, hopefully just because that was how long it took to rent a car, not because the use of her credit card had attracted the police as she had feared. He turned back, then stood and strolled deeper into the park. He’d been casual enough for long enough. He glanced at his watch.

8:18 A.M. IN FARO.

3:18 IN THE MORNING IN WASHINGTON, D.C.

CAMP DAVID, MARYLAND. ASPEN LODGE,

THE PRESIDENTIAL CABIN. 3:20 A.M.

A musical ringtone jolted President John Henry Harris from a deep sleep. It took a moment before he realized the sound was coming from the slate gray cell phone on the table at his elbow. The phone he had long prayed would ring. He stared at it almost in disbelief, then snatched it up and clicked on.

“Nicholas!” he blurted. “Are you alright? Where are you?”

“Faro, Portugal.”

“Portugal?”

“Is it safe to talk? Are you alone?”

“Yes.” The president sat up quickly.

“I don’t have much time.”

“Go ahead.”

“You know about Theo Haas, about the Berlin police?”

“Of course.”

“I didn’t kill him. A young man did. I chased after him. He got away in a crowd. People thought I was running from the murder scene.”

“I believe you. It’s alright.”

“Just before Haas was murdered he gave me a clue as to where the photographs were or might be. A man named Jacob Cadiz, in the Portuguese beach town of Praia da Rocha. There’s a woman involved.”

“I know. Anne Tidrow. Striker Oil. Her father founded the company. For a time she was in the CIA.”

“You do your homework.”

“I try.”

FARO.

Marten turned his back as two cyclists in bright jerseys moved past him to join a group of six other riders waiting at the far end of the park.

“She’s with me now, across the street, with luck renting us a car. Next comes the crazy part. I’m not so sure she isn’t still with the Agency. Her old connections got us out of Berlin and then Germany courtesy of a former operative who arranged for a private plane. We were being tracked, and our pilot may well have tipped off whoever’s on our tail to where we landed. Meaning that at this point, I don’t know who’s who or what’s what with anyone.”

“Does Ms. Tidrow know about this Jacob Cadiz or Praia da Rocha?”

“Not yet.”

“Can you get rid of her? Go there on your own?”

“That’s part of the problem. She says she’s concerned with her father’s reputation and the reputation of the company. That she doesn’t like where its directors have taken it, especially in Iraq and with the Hadrian company. The photographs and the company’s culpability in the civil war in Equatorial Guinea pushed her over. While we were in Berlin she agreed to meet with Joe Ryder after we recover the photos and tell him what she knows about the Striker/Hadrian situation in Iraq and Equatorial Guinea. That is, if we get them, if they’re there at all. There’s another thing, too. She learned something from a former CIA operative in Germany that shook her up and that she won’t talk about. Whatever it is it may be even more valuable than the photographs. I’d like to think the Agency is very quietly trying to protect its friends at Striker and Hadrian and at the same time trying to prevent what could turn into a major international incident. But somehow I think it’s more than that, and she knows what it is. All of them are reasons why I can’t just walk away from her.