The Hadrian Memorandum - Allan Folsom [149]
Ten minutes more, then twenty. A car went by outside, its lights momentarily reflecting off the ceiling and letting him see her. She was still hunched in the chair, the robe over her, crying inconsolably.
“It all has to do with why you went out, doesn’t it?” he said. “What were you doing? What happened?”
There was no reply. Just tears and wrenching emotion.
“If you didn’t want me to know, you wouldn’t have come back.”
Still there was no response.
A few minutes more and the crying slowed and then stopped. “My purse,” she murmured softly. “It’s on the chair by the bed.”
“I can’t see what I’m doing. I need to turn on a light. Is that alright?”
“Yes.”
Marten got up, crossed to a lamp next to the bed, and switched it on. The room filled with a dim, warm glow. Then he found the purse.
“Open it,” she said. “There’s a zipper pocket just inside, near the top.”
“What’s in it?”
“You’ll see.”
Marten opened the purse and found the zipper, then pulled it open. Inside the pocket was a single item. A drugstore-type film processing envelope.
“This?”
“Yes.”
He opened it. Inside were several strips of processed 35 mm film. He looked at her, puzzled. Her eyes were red. What little makeup she wore had been streaked by rivulets of tears.
“In the bottom of the purse . . .” she said hesitantly, “is something I’ve . . . kept with me . . . ever since I . . . left the Agency. It was habit . . . The old . . . spymaster special. A 35 mm Minox camera. When . . . we . . . crossed . . . the city, the shops I . . . kept going into . . . I was . . . looking for a place that had . . . photo-developing service. I found one in the . . . Baixa district. One hour or less . . . just like . . . at home . . . Open till midnight . . . seven days a . . . week.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will.” Deliberately she reached up and wiped her eyes with the palms of her hands. “Go into the . . . bathroom . . . turn on the light over the sink and . . . and hold the strips up to . . . it. Don’t look . . . for pictures. There are . . . none . . . Only . . . words.”
96
Marten entered the bathroom. The Glock was still on the marble ledge just above the Jacuzzi tub where he’d left it. He crossed to the sink and turned on the light above it, then opened the envelope and carefully held the first strip up to it. It was hard to see what had been photographed. It looked like the page of a document, but he couldn’t read it without some kind of magnification.
“It’s page one of three.” Anne stood in the doorway, the robe pulled around her. In the brighter light she was pale and seemed wholly spent.
“Come over here and sit down, please,” he said gently and touched the edge of the tub.
“ ‘Top Secret—XARAK Protocol’ is the first line.” She stayed in the doorway where she was. “The next follows beneath it. ‘Central Intelligence Agency, Washington, D.C. Subject: Memorandum of Understanding or MOU. For: President/CEO and General Counsel for AG Striker Oil and Energy Company; and for Chairman, President, and General Counsel for Hadrian Worldwide. From: Deputy Director, Central Intelligence Agency. Via: Director, National Clandestine Service. The General Counsel—CIA Office of General Counsel. Reference: NSCID-19470; EO-13318; CIA Operational Targeting Authority 1A.’
“It’s all there, Nicholas. Everything that happened in Equatorial Guinea since the plan for the Bioko field was orchestrated by the Agency. I’ll give you more. I memorized most of it as I photographed the pages. Memorization. I was trained in it. The way you memorized poems or the Gettysburg Address or the Preamble to the Constitution when you were in school.
“One,” she continued. “Based on direct, as well as implied, National Security tasking authorities stipulated in REFs, and in accordance with the Letter of Instruction (LOI) submitted separately from the Deputy Director of the CIA (DD/CIA), the General Counsel has prepared a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) among the so-named trilateral participants