Twenty minutes later Moyer was in his private office, door locked, secure phone in hand. When they established contact Newhan Black’s first words were: “I’m not going to tell you everything that’s going on, and it’s probably better that you don’t know. But this is what I want done.”
Now, at nearly five thirty in the afternoon, Moyer sat at a small cocktail table in the Ritz Bar sipping a Dubonnet on ice and chatting with forty-year-old Debra Wynn. Wynn was chief of the U.S. State Department’s Regional Security Office and, like Moyer, based in the U.S. Embassy/Lisbon. She was responsible for coordinating all security for the embassy, visiting guests, and dignitaries. In this case they had a CODEL, a congressional delegation, in the person of Congressman Joe Ryder of New York, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, coming into the country.
“What I would like, Debra, is to go over the Ryder situation.” Fifty-one-year-old Moyer fit well into the hotel’s posh surroundings-neatly trimmed graying hair, navy blazer, pin-striped shirt open at the neck, khaki trousers, oxblood loafers-one embassy official having drinks with another at the hotel where an important U.S. politician was due to arrive the next day. “The congressman, coming here as he is, makes him a very high-profile target. That he’s passing through on his way back from Iraq doesn’t help. As you know, I would have preferred to have him stay at the embassy.”
Wynn looked at Moyer directly. She was handsome and athletic, a twenty-year State Department veteran who’d come up through the ranks, as Moyer had. The difference was, her personality was far more guarded. While he drank Dubonnet, she chose iced tea. “The choice of where to stay was his,” she said.
“I know. And it’s why I came here, to look around for myself and to offer you some assistance.”
“You think he needs it?”
Moyer took a sip of the Dubonnet and used the government-employee-speak of someone more senior in rank than the person being addressed. “I hate to think what the result would be if something happened.”
In other words-what her career and life would look like if she had been offered CIA help in protecting Ryder and turned it down, and then, as Moyer said, something happened.
Wynn looked to the glass of iced tea on the cocktail table next to her, then picked it up and held it without drinking. “How many of your people should I expect?”
“One.”
“One?”
“Sometimes in one man you get ten.” Moyer smiled. “When are your people scheduled to secure the congressman’s room?”
“Tomorrow morning at seven.”
“My man will be there at six thirty. He is to be afforded freedom of movement. Your people will understand.”
“You mean he won’t be taking orders from us.”
Moyer nodded.
Debra Wynn smiled courteously. “Does he have a name?”
“Carlos Branco. But he will use another name then.”
“He’s a local. Portuguese.”
“Yes. You know him?”
“Just the name.”
“He’s been in the business for a long time. He knows the city and his way around it better than any of us, and the congressman will be visiting a number of venues before he has dinner with the mayor.” Moyer took another sip of the Dubonnet, then set the glass down and stood to leave. “One last thing. Ryder is used to RSO security, so let him think my man is one of yours. There’s no need to alarm him.”
“Is there a need for alarm?”
“It’s a precaution, nothing more.”
Debra Wynn nodded; again came the courteous smile. “Then, thank you.”
“We do what we can.” Moyer nodded and walked off.
She watched him leave the bar area and go out into the lobby. His driver met him there, and they left.
Moyer had said he’d come there to look around and to offer some assistance. Look around? He’d been stationed in Lisbon for more than three years. The Ritz was an international gathering spot, a place he’d been in and out of countless times. The assistance he was offering could as easily have been offered over the phone. The real truth was he’d come there to meet her in the venue where Joe Ryder would be staying for the purpose of gaining information. The “looking around” had been primarily into her eyes when he told her he wanted to place one of his operatives among hers. There had been no question that she would accept his offer, but he’d wanted to see if she knew more about Ryder’s visit than she was telling. Clearly something was going on and the CIA was involved. Whatever it was, it would require a security clearance and pay scale far higher than hers. So what he’d seen in her eyes would have been what he expected. Nothing. Whatever Congressman Ryder’s visit was really about, she didn’t know. And didn’t want to.
5:52 P.M.
80
SIMCO FALCON 50. 5:57 P.M.
Conor White looked at Patrice and Irish Jack in the seats across from him. They were calm and relaxed, patiently waiting for the plane to touch down and the next act to begin. White wasn’t quite as comfortable or composed.
Abruptly he shifted his weight and looked out the window as the chartered jet began its descent into Lisbon, a city he’d been to a dozen times or more-but never in a situation like this, where his entire future rode on luck. He had no doubt whatsoever that soon, maybe within hours, the pictures would be made public and, in the hands of the Russians, in a most demonic way. Meaning that aside from the terrifying specter of a superpower showdown in Equatorial Guinea, what he had feared from the beginning would finally come to pass-that his career, and therefore his life, were essentially over. The blame he put fully on Sy Wirth and his stupid, colossal meddling. If it would have accomplished anything at all, he would have killed him right there in the Faro hotel room. But there had been no point because things were beyond the control of either of them. Instead he’d simply watched as Wirth, in what could best be described as a violent stupor, picked up one of two BlackBerrys on the room’s writing desk and started to call Loyal Truex in Iraq to tell him what had happened. At the same time, the other BlackBerry sounded. Wirth looked at the one in his hand-one with a small piece of blue tape on the bottom-and, seeming to realize it was not the device he had intended to use, quickly put it in his pocket and answered the other. Truex had been on the line, excited and at the same time agitated. At that moment things began to happen, fast.
The first part was information, most of it coming from Truex.
Joe Ryder had suddenly been called away from a close inspection of the records division of Hadrian’s central facility in Baghdad. Less than thirty minutes later his plane had taken off for Rome, the first leg of a hurried return trip to Washington. But Rome, Truex had learned, was not his final destination in Europe. Lisbon was. The purpose of his Lisbon visit? A courtesy call on Lisbon’s mayor. It was bullshit. A man like Ryder, who’d gone all the way to Iraq for a hands-on inspection of the Striker and Hadrian operations there, accompanied by several members of his commission, an audit team, and their support staff, and who then suddenly abandoned everyone and everything to hurry back to Washington alone and for reasons unknown, does not stop to make a courtesy call on the mayor of Lisbon. Clearly he was going to the Portuguese capital for some other and very specific reason. And since Marten and Anne had been in Portugal that day, it was more than
