The Hadrian Memorandum - Allan Folsom [130]
“Yes, and maybe White is, too. We’ve been through that.”
“Nicholas—” Something caught her eye and she looked off. A well-dressed elderly couple sitting nearby was watching them intently. She smiled politely, then gently turned her back to them and looked to Marten.
“It all has to do with the photographs,” she said quietly and almost offhandedly, as if she were simply discussing the weather or where they might go for dinner. “If Erlanger knew about them, I don’t know. But clearly Franck did. He brought Kovalenko along because he had to, but he would have killed him afterward, the same as he planned to do with us.”
“You’re saying the Agency wants to make sure Ryder doesn’t get them.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think they would particularly delight in the idea of someone—one of their own former operatives, or an expat American landscape architect, or even an esteemed U.S. congressman—having graphic proof that a private security contractor conspired to provoke a revolution in a third world country, especially one that resulted in the deaths of thousands of its citizens, to benefit an American oil company. Franck’s job was to kill us after he got the photographs. What makes you think that order isn’t still in place?
“The Agency has long arms, Nicholas, and very good hearing.” She nodded across the street toward number 17. “What if they’re already in there waiting? Or will be told where we are once we go inside? Who knows who this Raisa Amaro is, anyway?”
Just then the elderly couple walked slowly past, the gentleman walking with a cane and tipping his hat as he passed, his wife holding his arm.
Marten waited for them to move out of hearing, then abruptly turned to Anne. “Joe Ryder’s expecting to contact us through whatever means Ms. Amaro has set up for us. We try to reach him now—if we can reach him—and tell him our fears, he’ll want to change his plans. If he does, the people with him will want to know why, and he’ll have to tell them something, which can only make things worse when he tries to find a way to connect with us. We have to take the chance that your Lisbon chief of station, Sy Wirth, and White and his friends don’t yet know we’re here or, if they do, where we are.”
Anne looked off. She didn’t like it at all.
In the next instant a distinctive white-and-blue car with a thin red stripe running the length of it drove slowly past. A single word was painted on it—POLICIA. Seconds later two motorcycle units followed, their helmeted, uniformed riders carefully surveying the park as they went by. A moment of stillness followed, and then two more motorcycle units came by, this time on the far side of the park.
“May I suggest another storm front?” Marten asked quietly. “The very real possibility that Franck’s body has been found and that the authorities are keeping it quiet until the Portuguese police and maybe their counterparts in Spain, France, and Italy have been alerted and given the order to locate and take into custody the two persons the Hauptkommissar was investigating for the murder of Theo Haas. The same two persons the police know he followed to a beach house in Praia da Rocha that was owned by a certain Jacob Cádiz.”
Anne smiled thinly. “You’re saying we should take a great leap of faith and introduce ourselves to this Raisa Amaro as quickly as possible.”
“Sooner, darling. Sooner.”
7:34 P.M.
82
7:45 P.M.
“There are just you three, no more?”
“Yes.”
“A car and driver will be outside whenever you have need. Supplementary transportation is available with a ten-minute-or-less response time.”
“Good.”
“I know you are armed. Will you need additional armaments?”
“Unlikely, but it would depend on the situation.”
Conor White and Carlos Branco stood on the balcony of a modest fourth-floor apartment on Rua do São Filipe Néri. In the distance, long shadows cast by the setting sun