The Hadrian Memorandum - Allan Folsom [159]
President Harris had reached him just before his plane entered Lisbon airspace. The first thing he’d asked was if Ryder completely trusted his own RSO detail, to which he’d answered in the affirmative. The second was not a question but a warning: Trust no one from the Lisbon embassy. Assume your movements are being watched, that your room is bugged and all of your phones monitored, cells included. Then:
“Do not try to contact Marten. You’ll have to take your own RSO people into your confidence and just hope to hell they’re not professionally, psychologically, or in any other way beholden to the RSO/Lisbon people. You will need to get out of your hotel quickly and unseen. Your people should be able to help you do it. Now,” he said, “write this down,” and Ryder had.
“You are to meet Marten and Anne Tidrow at the Hospital da Universidade, University Hospital, 25 Rua Serpa Pinto at eleven local time. Come in the rear entrance. A large, balding man named Mário Gama, the hospital’s director of security, will be behind the desk. Introduce yourself as John Ferguson of the American Insurance Company and say you are there to meet Catarina Silva, the accounts receivable director. He’ll take you to where Marten and Anne are. At eleven fifteen a laundry truck will meet the three of you and your RSO detail outside the same entrance you came in. Go directly to the airport, get on your plane, and get the hell out of there.” The president had been emphatic, the tenor of his voice emphasizing both the danger and the significance of what they were attempting.
“Anne and Marten will be carrying very important information, so the whole thing, once you meet them, has to be bang, bang, bang. If you run into trouble and can’t make it on time, Marten will wait until eleven thirty. If you don’t show up, if it doesn’t work at all, then repeat everything at the exact same time tomorrow. Lastly, tell the embassy RSO people you’re meeting an old friend for lunch and that you will need a car at eleven thirty. The place is the Café Hitchcock in the Alfama district. It’s well away from the area where the hospital is. That will have them thinking you’re staying in your room until then, and they’ll stand down, for a little while anyway, which hopefully will be long enough for you to get out of the hotel and to Marten.”
With that he’d wished him well and signed off quickly. He’d sounded like he felt he’d already spoken too long and was worried—calling as he had at nearly three o’clock in the morning Washington time—that someone from his Secret Service detail would come into his room to make certain he was alright and then set a wave of gossip rolling with speculation about who he had been talking to and why.
“Ready to go down to the pool, sir?” Agent Grant stood in the doorway to the adjoining room.
“You bet. Right now.”
9:37 A.M.
101
9:40 A.M.
Hunched over, flashlight beam focused in front of them, the Glock automatic in his waistband, Marten led Anne down a dark, narrow, low-ceilinged, cobweb-filled brick-and-mortar passageway that led from the basement of the building at 17 Rua do Almada to that of the building next door. It was a corridor that, theoretically at least, would continue on to the building after that and the one after that, ending finally in the basement at number 9, the last edifice on the block, which was at the far end of the park and a good fifty yards down from where the lookouts were stationed.
These long-unused connecting passageways had been built during World War II, when a neutral Portugal became a temporary haven for Jewish refugees fleeing Central Europe and Lisbon was a major transit point for exit to the United States. Sections of the Baixa, Chiado, and Bairro Alto districts with their close proximity to the harbor were favorites not only