Marten shuffled through the pile of photographs, found the letter-sized envelope the memory card had been in, and dropped the card into it. Folding it, he snapped an elastic band around it and handed it to the Russian. “Sealed with a kiss,” he said.
Kovalenko smiled broadly and stuffed it into his pocket. “As always, it was good to see you, tovarich. Though too many years have passed. Your dear sister, Rebecca, is well and still in Switzerland?”
“Yes.”
“Give her my regards. Perhaps one day we will all holiday together.”
With a nod at Anne, Kovalenko started for the door.
“One more thing, tovarich,” Marten called after him. “Why did you kill the Hauptkommissar when you could have strung him along for years longer?” Kovalenko turned back, the Glock still in his hand. “You had an unknowing mole in both the CIA and the Berlin police,” Marten said. “He would have continued to be of immense value.”
“Once we had the photographs he was to kill you and Ms. Tidrow,” Kovalenko said quietly. “It was his assignment. It would have been bad manners for me to let that happen. Don’t you agree?”
Abruptly he slid the Glock into his belt, then took Franck’s Heckler & Koch machine gun from his shoulder and leveled it at them. Marten’s eyes went to it; so did Anne’s.
“So you do it, instead of him,” Marten said coldly. “Then everyone’s out of the picture.”
“After all we have been through together, tovarich? You embarrass me with your distrust.” The roundish, bearded Russian gave a great teddy bear grin. “What I think is that you will have trouble still. Especially from this Conor White. More so now that the photographs are in your possession.” Immediately his free hand went to his belt. He lifted the Glock from it and tossed it to Marten, then slid an ammunition clip from his jacket pocket and flipped it to him as well. “Fifteen-round magazine. A similar magazine is in the pistol, except that one round has been used. It means you have twenty-nine shots left.” He paused and let his eyes go to Anne; then they came back to Marten. “Your rental car-four-door silver Opel Astra, license plate number 93-AA-71. The Portuguese police have that information.”
“As the late Hauptkommissar said.”
“They will not be watching now because he had called them off. But be very careful where you go next, tovarich.” Kovalenko let the slightest grin escape. “I trust we remain the best of friends and that you will not use my own weapon against me. If you did you would then have two bodies to explain.” He nodded at Anne, then, just like that, turned for the door and was gone.
They watched through the window as he walked up the gravel driveway to the Peugeot with Franck’s body in the trunk. A moment later he got in, started the engine, and drove off.
Marten waited until he disappeared from view at the top of the driveway, half expecting a phalanx of police to suddenly materialize and start down toward them. It didn’t happen. Most likely because Franck, as Kovalenko had said, had called them off. He gave it another thirty seconds, then went down the hallway and began gathering the photographs.
Anne was watching the driveway. “Conor and his men won’t be far behind.”
“White’s not our only concern.” Marten slipped the pictures into the plastic wrapping and then into the envelope. “Kovalenko’s got to leave the car somewhere. Once Franck’s body is found, every cop in Europe will be looking for us thinking we killed him. And there won’t be a lot of confusion about where to start. Right here.”
1:21 P.M.
74
STILL PRAIA DA ROCHA, THE SANTA CATARINA FORTRESS.
SAME TIME.
The old fort was at the eastern end of Avenida Tomas Cabreira and on the banks of the Rio Arade near its mouth, where it emptied into the sea. It had been constructed in 1621 to defend the cities of Silves and Portimao from Moors and Spanish pirates. Now it was little more than a tourist attraction, a series of ancient stone buildings and a small chapel devoted to St. Catherine of Alexandria, its terrace giving sweeping views of the Atlantic, the river, and Praia da Rocha’s beaches and sandstone cliffs. It also was a place for Josiah Wirth and Conor White to meet while they tried to put together what went wrong and if there was yet a way to do something about it.
Some fifty yards distant, Patrice and Irish Jack sat in a black Toyota Land Cruiser in the fortress’s parking lot watching them. They could see Wirth pacing back and forth on the terrace talking vigorously into his BlackBerry while White stood patiently nearby, the bright sunshine reflecting like a shimmering wall off the sea behind them.
Irish Jack lifted a pair of binoculars and pointed them in their direction. Immediately both men came into close focus. A second later, Wirth clicked off the Blackberry and stared off in disgust.
“Maybe your friend has nothing to report, Mr. Wirth, and that is the reason he hasn’t been in contact.” Conor White was deliberately composed and accommodating, desperately trying to remain civil to a man he wholly detested. “Maybe his people were on top of Marten and he sidestepped them, like he did all of us in Malaga. Maybe he’s still somewhere here in Praia da Rocha. Try your friend again. He might be in a dead zone, or something’s wrong with his cell. Maybe by now he has it working and knows something.”
“He isn’t in a dead zone for more than an hour. There’s nothing wrong with his cell, either. He’s not taking my calls because he doesn’t want to.”
“Then something went wrong with Anne and Marten.”
“Nothing went wrong,” Wirth spat angrily, then lifted the BlackBerry again and walked off to stare out at the Atlantic where a dozen or more sailboats were passing by in some sort of regatta.
White could see him punch in a number, then wait while it rang through. Seconds later he clicked off, then clicked on again and apparently tried another number.
What happened between the time Wirth had given them Praia da Rocha as Marten’s destination and the time they arrived to take care of him, there was no way to know. But at this stage Wirth was clearly in a state of what White called controlled emotional upheaval. Not much different from the behavior he’d observed over the few months he’d known him. Yet his emotional state now was the worst he’d seen and the cracks were beginning to show. Clearly he felt he’d been double-crossed, cut out of the picture at the last moment. Not only was he outraged that it had happened, he didn’t know what the hell to do about it.
Before, when they’d been close on Marten’s tail, when they’d finally learned where he’d landed and then gone, there had been every expectation that they would soon recover the photographs and their fears would come to an end. Seemingly that was no longer the case. If whoever this third party was that Wirth had engaged to track Marten down had intercepted him along the way and retrieved the photos, he/she/they would have known something of what was in them from the beginning. Meaning they had planned all along to recover them for their own purposes. Meaning, too, that White’s long-held fear that the Striker chairman had gotten in far over his head had suddenly become a horrendous reality. If he’d hated Josiah Wirth before, he hated him more now than anyone he’d ever met. And that included his father.
“Conor,” Wirth called sharply, then turned and came excitedly toward him. “An
