The Hadrian Memorandum - Allan Folsom [203]
“The size of the country makes it manageable. The oil is there. Striker has its equipment and people in place. Everything’s ready to go. Unless Abba’s a fool, and you don’t seem to think he is, he’ll be more than happy to accept his eighty percent, caveats and all, because it gives him the chance to prove he was the right man all along and the opportunity to make his country look like a model for other emerging nations. More than that, if it’s done right, and Anne can certainly do it, Striker Oil will be seen as a company that cares with its checkbook about the people and places where it operates, and the image of a greedy American corporation elbowing its way into the riches of third world countries like Equatorial Guinea will slowly begin to fade. Geopolitical suspicions about other motives can be left to the pundits.”
Marten remembered sitting in that little den of a library waiting for the president to dismiss everything he’d said. But he didn’t. Instead he smiled, finished his drink, and stood up. “Cousin,” he said, “I think you have the makings of a true politician.” With that he crossed to the door and was gone.
“Mr. Marten, we need you for a few moments.” Marten’s musings were suddenly broken by one of the survey crew coming up the hill toward him.
“Sure,” he said and followed the man back down the hill to where the others waited. He looked out over the land as he went—the rolling meadows, the great copses of wood, the clouds rolling overhead. Autumn was in the air. Fresh and sweet. This was where he wanted to be. This was what gave him life. He’d had enough blood and violence to last a dozen lifetimes. He’d killed three men in Lisbon, four if you counted the motorcycle rider, and, much to his horror, had done it well and without remorse.
“I think you’re one of those people trouble follows around,” Marita had said. Well, maybe so, but now it was resolutely in the past and he vowed it would remain that way for the rest of his life.
PART TWO
THE SQUIRE CROSS PUB, OXFORD STREET. 7:30 P.M.
Marten ordered a pint of Banks & Taylor Golden Fox ale and his favorite chicken curry with balsamic rice, naan bread, and mango chutney. The food had come, but he hadn’t touched it. Instead he was working on his third Banks & Taylor.
He’d read the letter three times when he’d gotten home and twice more here. Now he picked it up again. It was a copy of a correspondence that had arrived in the day’s mail and been sent to him from Moscow with no return address. A scrawled note had accompanied it.
See International Herald Tribune, dated Monday, June 7,bottom of page one.
That had been all. Just the copy of the letter and the note. There was no need to wonder who’d sent it. Kovalenko.
The letter itself was brief and hugely personal and, to Marten at least, very moving. It had been sent, most ironically, in the form of a memo and dated a day before the incident at the Rossio Metro station.
TO: Colin Conor White
FROM: EKR
Dated: 4 June
Dear Son,
I began this note many times over the years, and each time I crumbled it up and threw it away out of shame and embarrassment and perhaps the fear that my wife and children would find out.
Finally I came to realize that the matter was my own, not theirs, and that I am getting on. I would not want to leave this life without having reached out to you to tell you how very proud I am of your accomplishments and how sorry I am not to have accepted your kind invitation to stand alongside you when you received the VC.
I know that you have tried numerous times to contact me in one way or another. That I did not respond is nothing more than a sad showing of personal weakness. If you would still be open to it, I would very much like us to meet, if to do nothing