"What about him?"
"Allegedly there are a number of photographs pertaining to the rebellion in Equatorial Guinea. They are why Marten came to Berlin, to collect them."
"What are they of?"
"All we"ve been told is that they are strategically important. Read into it what you will."
"By "allegedly" you mean "if they exist.""
"We are a.s.suming they do."
"What do you want from me?"
"Follow Marten. Find the pictures-the camera"s digital memory card may be with them. If it is, retrieve both. Afterward eliminate Marten and anyone with him."
"To follow him, Elsa, I have to find him without his knowing. Something quite difficult in itself but complicated even more by the elevated profile of the case and the number of police personnel involved."
"It can be done, Emil. We succeeded before in the old days and under far more difficult circ.u.mstances."
"We didn"t have the media curse we have now."
She hadn"t replied, just stared at him in silence. He"d been given an order. Excuses didn"t exist. Like the old days.
He remembered picking up his gla.s.s and taking a sip of the cognac, then looking at her directly. "Who is he?"
"Marten?"
"Yes."
"You mean other than a landscape architect?"
He"d nodded.
"As yet, we don"t know."
"Before he came to Berlin"-there was no point in keeping it a secret from her; she might have known anyway-"he had been in Equatorial Guinea. So had Anne Tidrow, the woman we think is with him."
"Board member," she"d said. "Striker Oil Company. Houston, Texas. They have a large oil operation in Equatorial Guinea."
"So you do know."
"Tell me the rest, Emil."
"While they were there a priest was murdered. He was the brother of Theo Haas."
"Did either of them have contact with the priest?"
"I don"t know. Any more than I know why Marten-"
"Murdered Theo Haas?"
"Yes."
"Did he murder him?"
"I"m not sure."
"Still, it is reason enough for you to kill him after you recover the photographs."
"Yes, if your information is correct and he knows where they are."
She"d looked at him with a steely silence, a gesture of condescension she"d employed for as long as he"d known her. Then she"d picked up her gla.s.s, drained it.
"I will give you further instructions as I have them," she"d said, then set the gla.s.s on the bar and looked at him once more-either remembering the old days or trying to judge whether or not she could still trust him, he didn"t know which. "Please lock the door when you leave," she"d said finally, then stood up and walked out.
Her instructions had come two hours later, waking him shortly after he"d fallen asleep on his office couch. He was to meet a man in the Tiergarten on the southern edge of Neuer Lake at ten o"clock that same morning. He would be a Russian in his midforties, bearded and a little overweight. His name was Kovalenko.
43.
9:48 A.M.
Marten felt the van lean to the right, then accelerate and even out. After that there was the quiet hum of the tires over the roadway and little else. If Anne and Erlanger were talking, he couldn"t hear them.
Who Erlanger was or might be, Marten had no idea. His best guess was that he was one of Anne"s German operatives from her CIA days in Berlin. It made him wonder when that had been. She was forty-two now. So how old would she have been when she left the agency to care for her father? Twenty-nine, thirty, maybe a little more. So for ten or more years at least she had stayed in contact with these people, not just Erlanger, but the woman whose apartment they had stayed in, and the person or persons who had tailed him from the airport and then told her where he was. Of them all it was the woman who"d provided the apartment and now Erlanger who were most on the spot. They were aiding fugitives and if caught risked serious prison time. On the other hand, if they had been operatives, or maybe still were, this was the kind of thing they did all the time, where connections were everything and loyalty and silence ran deep.
By Marten"s estimate they had been traveling for nearly thirty minutes at good speed and without being stopped again, which meant they were probably on a major highway and headed for some town or city that lay outside of Berlin proper and its heavy blanket of police. Suddenly he began to wonder just where Erlanger was taking them and what would happen when they got there. Getting out of Berlin was one thing, getting out of Germany quite another, because there would be intense law enforcement presence at the airports, metro, train, and bus stations. Seemingly the only way out would be for Erlanger to drive them across the border himself. Maybe that was his intention. Maybe Anne had worked that part out, too, but it was unlikely; since she still had no idea where the photographs were, it would be impossible for her to give Erlanger or anyone else a destination. Telling her where they were-"if" they were-was something he"d so far managed to avoid but was a subject he knew would come up as soon they reached their destination.
He"d known from the moment they"d left the Adlon that at some point he"d have to tell her something, especially when he realized that she might actually be able to get him out from under the noses of the police, but just how much to reveal was tricky. Tell her too much and she wouldn"t need him, might even turn him over to Franck just to get him out of the way. Tell her nothing and he would get no farther than wherever Erlanger was taking them now.
The answer, he decided, was to wait and see where that was and what the circ.u.mstances were when they got there.
9:57 A.M.
44.
BERLIN, THE TIERGARTEN, NEUER LAKE. 10:10 A.M.
They looked like Mutt and Jeff as they walked down a wooded path at the water"s edge, their jacket collars turned up against the drizzle-the six-foot six-inch Emil Franck, alongside five-foot nine-inch Yuri Kovalenko. Kovalenko spoke a hesitating German. Franck"s Russian was as pa.s.sable. Consequently they held their conversation in English.
Their primary order of business: the photographs and, with luck, the memory card from the camera that recorded them. Neither man knew what the photos were of or if they even existed. What brought the two together was the promise of the objects" importance and the endeavor to retrieve them.
10:15 A.M.
The two turned a blind corner near an inlet, startling several ducks into flight. Franck stopped to watch them fly out over the lake, then land in the water a safe distance from sh.o.r.e. For a moment he stood there enjoying the simple pleasure of observing wildlife. Finally he reached into his jacket and took out photographs of Marten and Anne Tidrow. Marten"s was made from a frame of the cell phone images circulated to the media; Tidrow"s was from a Striker Oil web site.
Kovalenko glanced at them and put them in his pocket. "Thank you, Hauptkommissar. I have previously seen a photograph of Ms.Tidrow. Mr. Marten, I already know something of."
"You are referring to his employment as a landscape architect in England and that he was in Equatorial Guinea when the brother of Theo Haas was murdered."
"Yes." Kovalenko nodded. "That and a little more."
"You have information we don"t."
"At one time he was a homicide investigator in the Los Angeles Police Department."
"What?"
"Good one, too."
"How do you know this?"
Kovalenko smiled. "It"s a long story, Hauptkommissar. Just appreciate that I do." His smile faded. "It is only a matter of time before your excellent police force apprehends both him and Ms. Tidrow. You realize we cannot have that happen."
"Perhaps he will get lucky and escape," Franck said flatly, and the two walked on. Tall German, short Russian. Gray sky. Incessant drizzle.
Kovalenko smiled thinly. It was safe to a.s.sume "perhaps" had little to do with it. By now he could have had a much clearer photograph of Marten to hand around. Say, one requested from British authorities, a copy retrieved from his pa.s.sport or driver"s license. But such a thing would only serve to make it easier for the public to spot him and alert the police. Alternatively, he might well have made arrangements that, in one way or another, would allow Marten and his companion to evade his own ma.s.sive dragnet.
"Yes, perhaps he will get lucky, Hauptkommissar," Kovalenko said. "Perhaps indeed."
10:20 A.M.
10:28 A.M.
Conor White stared absently out the window of the tri-engine Falcon 50 as the chartered jet flew north toward Berlin. Thirty thousand feet below and through a broken cloud deck he could see Geneva and the Jet d"Eau, Lake Geneva"s im mense water fountain, spraying a cannon of water five hundred feet in the air. Yet neither the Swiss city nor the sight of the fountain registered. His thoughts were on Berlin and what would take place when he got there.
The whole thing in Spain had been an unfortunate, messy, and, as it turned out, wholly unnecessary exercise because he realized almost from the start that the Spaniards had no idea where the photographs were, or even what they were. Yet it was a situation he couldn"t walk away from until he knew for certain. He"d pushed it as far as he could, and after that there was no turning back, so he"d finished it with the hope it was something that would not come back to haunt them. Had he had his way in the first place he would have gone after Nicholas Marten directly, but that had not been his a.s.signment; it had been Anne"s. And look what had happened.
As far as he could tell the only thing positive to come from her work was that she had proven that Marten did know where the photographs were. It had been confirmed when she"d called him at the airport in Madrid.
"Where are you?" she"d said. "I just wanted to know where you were if I needed you."
When he had told her, he"d asked where she was. She had replied that she was in Berlin and warned him not to come there and to disregard anything he saw in the media. It was then he pressed her about Marten, making sure he was with her and asking directly if the photographs existed and if he knew where they were.
"Yes, I think so," she"d said after an awkward hesitation. She"d affirmed it when he"d pushed her a second time, demanding to know if she was certain.
"Do you think or do you know?" he"d demanded.
"I don"t think, Conor, I know," she"d snapped, then signed off.
White shook his head. If he had followed Marten, right from the start, by now, police or not, he would have been close on his tail or maybe even had him alone, with Anne nowhere in the picture. Either way the photographs would have soon been recovered and the whole nasty situation quickly resolved. But it hadn"t happened. Instead he was on his way to Berlin not to confront Anne and Marten but to meet with Sy Wirth. For what reason he had no idea, except that Wirth was his employer and was about to act like it. Tell him what to do and how and when to do it.
It was Wirth, he knew, who had had the last word in allowing Anne to follow Marten and sending him to Spain. If he made the same kind of uninformed decisions again, it would be only a matter of time before the police had both Anne and Marten and the photographs. If that happened everything would come apart, and fast.
Abruptly he turned from the window to see Irish Jack and Patrice quietly playing cards across from him. Neatly dressed in jackets and ties as he was, they looked like professional athletes en route to their next game. Which in a way they all were; that is, if he could somehow find a way to keep Sy Wirth out of it. But for the moment, the Texas oilman was calling the shots and White would do his best to accommodate him, graciously and with his best Eton, Oxford, and Sandhurst manners, when they touched down in Berlin.
10:32 A.M.
45.
POTSDAM, GERMANY. 10:40 A.M.
The van had been stopped for several minutes. From the dark of his hiding place in the compartment over the left rear wheel, Marten wondered what was going on. Erlanger had said something in German, and then the driver and pa.s.senger doors had opened and closed. After that there had been nothing. Had they reached their destination or had they been stopped by the police and silently ordered out of the vehicle at gunpoint?
Another minute pa.s.sed, and then he heard the rear doors open and someone come inside. He held his breath. There was a noise outside the panel next to his head. Abruptly it was removed. He pulled back, expecting to see a man in uniform or even Hauptkommissar Franck with a dozen police crowded in the doorway behind him. Instead Erlanger"s face came into view.
"Are you alright?" he said.
Marten heaved a sigh of relief. "Stiff and a little nervous but alright."
"I"m sorry. We had no choice. It was a means that worked quite effectively getting people out of the Eastern Sector during the Cold War."
"I could use a toilet, and in a hurry."
Anne, still in her blond wig and dowdy clothing, was waiting as he climbed from the van. For a fleeting moment she seemed as if she genuinely cared about his well-being and was grateful the trip was over and they had made it safely. As quickly, she was back to business.
"Come into the house," she said, then led him past some trees and up a gravel pathway to a two-story house that, from the surroundings, appeared to be in a quiet and leafy residential neighborhood.
Marten used the toilet and then opened the door and started down a hallway toward the front door, the way they"d come in.
"Here." He heard Erlanger"s voice from a room behind him. He turned back and entered a small, wood-paneled office to see Erlanger alone and just getting up from a desk. Behind him was a window that looked out on a small garden.
"Where is Anne?" Marten asked.
"Upstairs. She"ll be down in a moment. Would you like some coffee?"
"Yes, thank you," Marten said. Erlanger nodded and left.
Marten looked around. The room, like the little he"d seen of the rest of the house as he came in, was comfortable and worn, filled with a large collection of apparently well read books, knickknacks, and family pictures, as if whoever lived there had done so for years and had no intention of moving. Hardly the hideout of a man fearful of the police.
"Feeling better?" Anne suddenly walked into the room. Gone were the dowdy clothes and blond wig; back were her jeans, tailored jacket, and running shoes, her black hair twisted up in a bun at the back of her head. She looked s.e.xy and impatient and dangerous at same time.