off and the clock was counting down. Marten had no idea how long it would take to break through the obstruction. Or if it was even possible. And then there were the other questions. How long could an electrician’s truck wait outside without drawing notice from the men watching number 17? And what about Ryder? Was he on his way to Rua Serpa Pinto and the Hospital da Universidade? Had he even received the directive of where to go and when to meet? Even if he had, had he been able to slip away from the main RSO detail? What if he reached the hospital and found they weren’t there? What if they got there and he never showed up? What if they had to revert to the backup plans, retrace their steps, and do the same thing all over again tomorrow? And if he still wasn’t there? What then? And what about the here and now? What if they couldn’t move the barricade and had to go back to the apartment?
“Christ,” he swore out loud, then put his shoulder against the heavy wood and pushed. Nothing happened. He shoved at it again. Still nothing. He looked at Anne. She, like himself, was coated with more than a half century of brick and mortar dust. It covered their clothes, was in their hair, smeared on their faces, inhaled into their lungs. The only thing that helped her even a little was the bucket hat that he’d worn the night before and had asked her to wear when they left, hopefully making her less recognizable to anyone watching outside when they made their break for the electrician’s van.
Marten hit the barricade again. There was a sudden rain of dirt and dust from above and the obstruction gave just a little.
“Okay!” he said and hit it again. More dust and rubble came down. One more time and it moved. Not much but more than before. Once again. And then again. Finally he had enough room for them to squirrel through.
“Give me the light,” he said. Anne did, and Marten inched his head and shoulders into the opening. As he did a rat the size of a small cat dropped down from above. It landed on his head and clung there.
He cried out and tried to shake it free. Instead the terrified animal dug its claws into his scalp and held on. “Get the fuck off me!” he yelled and managed to bring his arm up to swat at it. Finally the rodent let go, jumped to the floor, and scampered off into the darkness. Marten swung the light in time to see a dozen more rats scurry off after it.
He took a breath and turned the light back at Anne, then helped her past the barricade and into the passageway beside him, his eyes close on her purse that she’d slung crossways over her chest. The purse that carried the prized contraband-the photographs and the 35 mm film strips of the Memorandum.
He took a moment to look at her before moving on in an attempt to judge her psychological state. Her eyes were clear and intent, as they had been ever since she’d found him on the phone with the president. Hopefully, with sleep, the episode she’d suffered the night before had passed and the most he had to concern himself with now was the ticking clock of the present. She’d had a few changes of underwear, but she still wore the jean outfit she’d had on since Erlanger’s house in Potsdam. It was worn and dirty and in desperate need of washing, but under the circumstances it didn’t matter. That he was in the same clothes he’d worn since Berlin didn’t matter, either. At the moment they might well have been thrust back in time, as much refugees as anyone who had passed that way those many years before. The only difference now was the enemy. They were fleeing the agents not of Hitler’s death machine but of their own country.
“What are you looking at?” she said finally.
“Trying to make sure you weren’t afraid of rats.”
“Only the human kind.”
“Me, too.” He swung the light into the passageway ahead.
“Nicholas.”
“What?” He looked back.
“Thank you for last night. I kind of lost it.”
He smiled gently. “I cried in Berlin. You cried in Lisbon. Now we’re even, so forget it.”
“I won’t forget it.”
“We have a congressman to meet.”
“I know.”
He watched her for a heartbeat longer. “Let’s get to it,” he said finally, then turned the light and they moved on.
9:52 A.M.
102
FOUR SEASONS HOTEL RITZ. SAME TIME.
Joe Ryder and his RSO special agents, Tim Grant and Chuck Birns, sat alone wrapped in towels in the men’s sauna in the hotel’s spa. Grant and Birns had stood by as Ryder spent several minutes in the lap pool; then the three retired to the men’s changing room area and afterward into the sauna, where Ryder took the men into his confidence, telling them what was happening and what needed to be done.
By nothing more than coincidence, Special Agent Grant’s physical build was almost the same as Joe Ryder’s. Months ago and at the suggestion of a friend in the Secret Service, he had dyed his hair the color of Ryder’s and had it styled in the same manner, then bought a pair of the same kind of rimless glasses the congressman wore. When he put them on, he was very nearly Ryder’s double, and unless a person knew each man well, it would be hard to tell them apart, especially from a distance. It was a game Grant had no trouble in playing, and he had done it more than once in Iraq getting Ryder safely through potentially dangerous situations.
The plan was to act it out again here. Grant, wearing Ryder’s clothes, would leave the spa and take the elevator to the lobby, very publicly pick up a copy of the
Partway there they would tell the driver that they’d decided to do a little shopping before lunch and ask him to pull over. When he did, they would get out, wait for him to drive off, then immediately take another cab to Rua Serpa Pinto, getting out several blocks from the Hospital da Universidade and walking the rest of the way. In the meantime Agent Grant would have changed from Ryder’s clothes into jeans and a light jacket, gone down the back stairs and crossed into the park himself, then flagged down a cab and gone directly to the area where the hospital was. But he would use it only as a reference point for the driver, saying he was going to visit a friend on a street nearby where he had been before but whose exact name he couldn’t remember. When they reached the area he would arbitrarily choose a street, tell the driver to stop, and then get out, saying he would know the building when he saw it. Like the others, he would wait for the driver to leave, then find his way to the hospital on foot, meeting Ryder and Birns just inside the rear entrance. Hopefully close to the appointed 11:00 A.M.
9:59 A.M.
Ryder and Birns came out through the pool area doors, crossed the formal garden, went down the steps to the low fence, and climbed over it. Two minutes later they were in Eduardo VII
