The Hadrian Memorandum - Allan Folsom [105]
10:32 A.M.
Avenida Tomás Cabreira turned out to be Praia da Rocha’s main drag. It was jammed with hotels and shops and restaurants and overlooked jagged sea cliffs and a beach far below that was dotted with rows of bright umbrellas and an uncountable number of semi-dressed beachgoers.
10:50 A.M.
They had driven the avenue itself twice and now were doing it again. What they saw this time was what they had seen before. Traffic, tourists, the Hotel da Rocha, the Hotel Jupiter, restaurant La Dolce Vita, restaurant A Portuguesa, restaurant Esplanada Oriental, bars, outdoor cafés, curio shops, a bank, a pharmacy, and several bakeries. But no bookstores, new or used.
“Used books. You’re sure?” Anne asked.
“That’s what Theo Haas told me.”
“No name for it.”
“All he said was livros usados, Avenida Tomás Cabreira.’ ” Marten knew he couldn’t expect to just show up and go right to it. Still, it should have been easy enough to find on a main street like Tomás Cabreira. But clearly it wasn’t here. So where was it? Closed? Moved to another location? Or had it never been here? Had Haas wholly distrusted him and sent him on a road to nowhere? If so, had he come all this way for nothing? Were the photographs still somewhere in Berlin?
“Christ,” Marten swore under his breath. He glanced around. A group of teenagers waved cheerfully, no doubt tickled by what seemed to be lost tourists who were chugging down the street for the third time in less than ten minutes. The driver of a car behind them honked impatiently, then suddenly sped up, passed in traffic, and cut sharply in front of them. Still no used-book store. Marten looked at his watch: 10:55 A.M.
The longer it took to unravel the puzzle, the more important time itself became. Slowed as they were and with no goal in sight, they were giving whoever was following them every opportunity to find out where they had landed and then pick up their trail. If they were CIA they would have had assets on the ground to begin with. Assets who could easily tap into car rental agency records, find Anne’s name and what make of car she had rented and its license number. Once they had that, finding them would relatively easy; then all they had to do was lie back and watch until they recovered the photos. Then what? If one of them happened to be Conor White, they could look to the same fate that had befallen Marita and her medical students in Spain. More than ever he wished he had a gun.
“Pull over,” Anne said suddenly.
“Why?”
“Just pull over.”
Marten did, sliding to a stop in a bus zone. Without a word she got out and approached two elderly men chatting outside a bar. They looked at her and then at each other, then back to her. The first man, plump, with a wrinkled hat and a dark suit with even more wrinkles, smiled. Then a finger came up and he pointed behind them and up a narrow alley. Anne grinned and nodded, then patted him gently on the cheek and came back to the car.
“It’s called “Granada.” Up the alley in the back.”
“How the hell did you do that?”
“You may remember I was in El Salvador, darling.” She slid in next to him. “A little Spanish goes a long way in this world, even in Portugal. Besides, a good CIA op, retired or not, can sell almost anything to anyone. It’s in their blood.”
“What did you sell?”
“A smile . . . from a not so unattractive forty-two-year-old woman.”
10:59 A.M.
68
HOTEL LARGO, FARO, PORTUGAL. 11:02 A.M.
Ten minutes earlier Sy Wirth had checked in, gone to his room, and immediately put in a call to Dimitri Korostin only to get the Russian’s voice mail. It was the fourth call and voice mail response in the thirty-odd minutes since his Gulfstream had touched down at Faro International Airport. Each time he’d left word for Korostin to call him back immediately. So far he’d had no reply.
He called again. Once more he got the voice mail. This time he left no word, just clicked off. This was crazy. They’d been in contact ever since he’d left Berlin.