The Hadrian Memorandum - Allan Folsom [137]
He’d found an umbrella stand in a cubbyhole near the apartment’s front door with three large umbrellas tucked into it. Several hats and caps had been in a nearby closet. As with almost everything else, and in a most thorough way, Raisa Amaro had provided her guests with solid protection against nature. Now, with the Glock automatic in his waistband and using the night and weather to help veil his movements, he ventured out.
Umbrella held overhead, jacket collar turned up, a bucket hat borrowed from the closet pulled over his ears and several-day growth of beard adding to his prayer that neither a passing police patrol nor White’s people, however many of them there might be, would recognize him, at least initially, he let Raisa’s front door close behind him, then crossed Rua do Almada and went into the now deserted park.
________
Six minutes later he crossed Rua da Flores, leaving the Bairro Alto district and entering the Chiado section, backtracking the way he and Anne had come. It was the only thing he could do considering that neither of them had been in Lisbon before today. His guess was that she had to have seen something in passing that caught her eye, a place she felt she could retreat to later. For what purpose he had no idea whatsoever.
Her fear of the CIA seemed to be at the core of everything. But what she thought she could do about it somewhere out here on a rainy Sunday night in a city she barely knew mystified him. Yet whatever she was so intent on doing was, as he’d told her, beside the point if she ended up in the custody of the police or dead at the hands of Conor White. Still, concerned about her as he was and as angry with her as he’d been, at another time and place he might have let it ride, have let her take her chances and get whatever it was out of her system while he stayed in the apartment riding herd on the photographs and keeping out of sight himself. But he no longer had that luxury. Not now, not after President Harris had so compellingly stirred the pot.
Twenty minutes earlier, and still in the apartment, he’d used his dark blue throwaway cell phone to call Harris—at Camp David or the White House or wherever he was—on his own throwaway cell. There had been no answer. He’d tried again to no avail. Then, seconds later, the apartment’s phone had rung. It startled him and he hesitated. Finally he picked up, sure it was either Anne or Joe Ryder.
“It’s me,” an unfamiliar voice said.
“Who is me?” he said warily.
“Cousin Jack. I was in a meeting when you called. I’m in another room using a laptop with a special voice-filtering IP service that’s very difficult to intercept.”
Marten relaxed. “You wanted me to let you know when we got here. I was waiting for Ryder’s call. I thought maybe this was it.” He made no mention of Anne, just let the president assume she was there with him.
“He’s still in Rome. You may not hear from him until tomorrow morning.” Immediately the president’s demeanor became more serious. “The Portuguese police have found the body of the German policeman, Emil Franck.”
“I know.”
“I asked for a detailed report on it. He was shot once in the back of the head. Then his body was put into a car and driven to a beach somewhere near Portimão where the car was set on fire. No mention was made of this Russian, Kovalenko, you talked about.”
“I wouldn’t think so. He’s very good at what he does.”
“When you called from the bookshop you told me Moscow knew about the Bioko field. If they already knew, why was he with the German?”
“The photographs. Franck was coming after them for the CIA. The Russians knew about them, but they didn’t know where they were. They hoped he would lead them to the prize. Franck was a double agent. He had no choice but to let Kovalenko come along.”
Marten heard the president hesitate, as if he’d suddenly had an even more troubling thought.