The Hadrian Memorandum - Allan Folsom [139]
“I realize that.”
“Then, as I said before, good luck and Godspeed. And keep Ms. Tidrow close.”
“Yes, sir, I will,” Marten said. The president clicked off.
Marten let out a breath
and stared
at the empty room.
10:10 P.M.
Lost in thought, still rattled by the president’s directive and his own guilt at letting Harris believe Anne was safely with him, Marten stepped blindly from a curb. Immediately there was a flash of headlights and a loud blare of horn, and he jumped back as a city bus passed inches from his nose. He swore out loud, then ducked low under his umbrella and crossed the street, moving deeper into the Chiado district looking for any sign of Anne.
For all the rain and dark and the fact that it was Sunday night, it was still summer, and even though most shops were closed, here and there he found an open café, a bar, a restaurant, a specialty shop selling souvenir T-shirts, coffee mugs, key chains, cheap cameras, and the like. She had to be in one of them because there was nothing else. But which one? And how far had she gone before she found what she wanted? Whatever that was.
10:13 P.M.
87
10:18 P.M.
The text message was sent from CIA Chief of Station/Lisbon Jeremy Moyer to Carlos Branco’s BlackBerry in an electronic heartbeat.
Striker Oil American Express credit card used at Hotel Lisboa Chiado, Rua Garrett, 9:57 P.M.
10:19 P.M.
The same message was forwarded by Branco to Conor White. And, after a moment’s hesitation, from White to Sy Wirth.
10:20 P.M.
Wirth had a one-word reply.
Respond!
10:24 P.M.
Nicholas Marten walked out of Casanova, a small blue-and-white-tiled restaurant permeated with the distinctive odor of delicately seasoned roast pork. Raising his umbrella against the rain, he walked on, his eyes scanning either side of the street for pedestrians. He’d counted twenty tables inside Casanova; six had still been occupied. None by Anne. Describing her to the English-speaking head waiter proved fruitless. No one resembling her had been in the restaurant all evening, let alone within the last hour. A quick use of the toilet facilities toward the kitchen area in the rear—a covering act to see if the restaurant had a second or private dining room—had been unproductive as well. The place was small. What you saw when you entered was what there was.
10:35 P.M.
A visit to a café further down the street and then a bar and shortly afterward a souvenir shop had had the same result. No Anne, nor anyone looking like her, had either come or gone within the past hour.
He moved on, the wet streets reflecting the vivid colors of lighted store signs and the headlights of passing traffic. By now he was walking along Rua Garrett and nearly out of the Chiado district. Ahead, and down a steep cobblestoned street—he recalled from earlier—and he would be in the even more densely populated Baixa quarter. He was about to turn the corner and start down when two things came to mind at almost the same moment.
The first was something Anne had asked Raisa as she had shown them around the apartment.
“One other thing. A computer or laptop with an Internet connection. At some point I will need to do a little work.”
Raisa’s reply had been that as yet the building had no Internet connection. It was a reality Anne had accepted with little more than a nod.
The second was something that had happened earlier as they’d climbed from the Baixa quarter and turned onto Rua Garrett, where he was now—when Anne had suddenly ducked into a small, elegant five-star hotel to use the loo. At the time it had seemed completely reasonable, but putting the two pieces together now he wondered if she hadn’t been doing something more than just taking a pee. Maybe she’d been deliberately checking out the hotel to see if it had Internet service, a service a five-star hotel might very well provide even if some of the surrounding neighborhoods did not. But why? She had an Internet connection on her BlackBerry.
Still . . .
Abruptly Marten turned back, retracing his steps on Rua