2:06 P.M.
Marten clicked off just as Logan’s door opened. Anne came in, followed by Stump Logan.
Anne looked at the cell phone in Marten’s hand, then at Marten. “Are we disturbing something?”
“An old girlfriend.”
“An old girlfriend? Right now, in the middle of all this?”
“Well, yes…”
“How old?”
“Let’s just say-from a long time ago.”
“And she still has your number?”
“And how.” Marten grinned a little, then slid the cell into his jacket. Abruptly the grin faded, and he looked to Logan. “Please close the door.”
He waited until Logan did, then looked at him directly. “A Berlin policeman followed me here investigating the murder of Theo Haas. He was killed at Cadiz’s home by a man who was with him and who later drove off with the body in the trunk of his car. Once it’s found the police will blanket this whole area, thinking I killed him. As I said earlier, all of this has to do with the civil war in Equatorial Guinea. Ms. Tidrow and I have a meeting tomorrow in Lisbon that hopefully will-”
“We do?” Anne interrupted him in surprise. Her look told him everything. She knew what the phone call had been about, that he had somehow arranged for them to meet with Joe Ryder in Lisbon. It was clear, too, that she realized she had little choice but to go through with her promise to meet him. At least for now.
“Yes, we do,” he said emphatically. Immediately he turned back to Logan. “That meeting may well change the course of the war. But none of it will happen if the police have us in custody.”
“You want me to help you get to Lisbon.”
“Yes.”
Logan glanced at Anne, then looked back to Marten. “Suppose you did kill the policeman. Theo Haas, too. Maybe even Father Willy. What if everything you’ve told me is a lie? I help you and the police find out, then what?”
“That’s something you have to decide for yourself. Theo Haas put this whole thing in motion to begin with because he was concerned for his brother’s safety and because of what he had uncovered in Bioko. He’s the reason I went there to meet with Father Willy and why I came here looking for Jacob Cadiz. It’s also the reason I was followed to his house by both the German policeman and the man who ended up killing him, a high-level Russian security operative. They were supposed to be on the same page but weren’t.” Marten pushed harder. “What I’m telling you is the truth. If it wasn’t, Ms. Tidrow and I could just as easily have tried to get to Lisbon on our own. We came to you because you knew Theo Haas and Father Willy and what kind of men they were. You’ve lived here a long time, you know how things operate. We’ve got to get out before the police close in or we won’t get out at all, and everything we’ve worked for, what Father Willy died for, will have been for nothing. Please, I’m begging you. Can you help us? Will you help us?”
Stump Logan took off his thick glasses and wiped his eyes, then put them back on. “It might be a grave error on my part, Mr. Marten,” he said finally. “But yes, I will try to help you.”
2:13 P.M.
76
FARO, HOTEL LARGO. 2:30 P.M.
Sy Wirth and Conor White came in the front entrance and went straight to the front desk, leaving Patrice and Irish Jack to wait outside in the black Toyota SUV. At this point Wirth had wholly abandoned the idea of keeping his distance from White. Too much was at stake, emotionally and physically, if the package Korostin had promised contained the photos and the camera’s memory card as he hoped-as the Russian had indicated when he’d so surprisingly and belatedly reached him as he stood with White at the Santa Catarina fortress in Praia da Rocha.
“You will find the terms of the contract have been fulfilled, Josiah,” he’d said with quiet assurance. “Everything is in a large envelope that is on its way by messenger to your hotel in Faro now. Things didn’t quite work out as planned. I apologize. We’ll do better the next time.” That he’d clicked off with no mention of either Marten or Anne didn’t matter. If the contract had been fully executed, the whole thing would be over anyway. What had happened to the others would be irrelevant. He would immediately destroy the photographs and the memory card, and they could all breathe a monstrous sigh of relief. Afterward White and his men would simply fly back to Malabo, and he would return to Houston.
“I’m Mr. Wirth, room 403. You have a package for me,” he said to a tallish red- haired woman behind the front desk.
“Yes, sir.” She turned and disappeared into a back room.
Wirth glanced at Conor White. Then the woman came back carrying a large padded envelope and handed it to him.
“How was it delivered?” he asked.
“I believe a taxi driver brought it, sir. I was at lunch at the time. I can check on it for you.”
“No matter,” he said and with a nod at White walked off toward the elevators.
Wirth pushed the button, the elevator door slid open, and he and White entered. Immediately he pushed the fourth-floor button and the door started to close. Suddenly it pulled back and a young couple entered. The man held the hand of a little boy. His wife, or at least the woman with him, was noticeably pregnant. Both smiled and nodded politely as they entered. Neither man responded.
They rode up in silence. Second floor. Third. The car stopped at the fourth, and they all got off. Wirth let them walk off down the corridor in front of them; then he and White followed. At room 403, Wirth stopped and slid his keycard through the slot in the door. A green light flashed, and the two men entered.
“Lock it,” Wirth said and went anxiously to a writing desk near the window. The moment he reached it, he tore the envelope open and dumped its contents on the desk. “What the fuck?”
There were a dozen eight-by-ten photographs. Eleven were cheesecake photos of naked women in various pornographic poses. The twelfth was of Sy Wirth himself, the official corporate photograph of Striker’s chairman standing alongside the company logo in the lobby of its Houston headquarters.
Apart from the photographs were two letter-sized envelopes. Enraged, Wirth ripped open the first and took out a small, thin rectangle, the size of a digital camera memory card. The trouble was, it was no memory card but a tourist trinket, a refrigerator magnet. Printed on the front in bright, happy red letters was the phrase FOND MEMORIES OF FARO, PORTUGAL.
“Fucking Russian cocksucker,” Wirth breathed, his face as crimson as the letters on the magnet. Immediately he picked up the second envelope. Angrily he ripped it opened and looked inside. White could see the color drain from his face.
Slowly Wirth turned the envelope upside down and a half-dozen or more torn pieces of paper fell onto the tabletop, landing among the cheesecake photographs, his official Striker portrait, and the Faro refrigerator magnet. White had no idea what it was. Sy Wirth had known instantly. It was what was left of the agreement for the massive Andean gas field, the Magellan/Santa Cruz-Tarija, he had given to Dimitri
