The Hadrian Memorandum - Allan Folsom [204]
I very much look forward to your response and, of course, to seeing you.
Your loving father,EKR
Following Kovalenko’s directive that he see the Monday, June 7, edition of the International Herald Tribune, bottom of page one. Marten had accessed the paper’s Web site and brought up the edition of the day in question, then quickly scrolled to the bottom of the first page, where he saw the photograph of a distinguished, silver-haired man. Above it was the caption
SIR EDWARD KERCHER RAINES, DECORATED BRITISHWAR HERO, LONGTIME MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT,DEAD AT 75.
There was no need to read the story; the caption told it all, its tragic revelation made all the more chilling when one knew it had been the paper clutched in Conor White’s hand as he sat motionless in the dim light of the subway kiosk. It was what he was referring to when he’d looked to Marten and said “He’s dead.”
Clearly, Raines was a father he’d never met but very much wanted to. In that moment when he’d slipped into the kiosk, prepared to use it as a blind from which to ambush Marten, he must have inadvertently seen the newspaper and been instantly shattered. There was little doubt it was the reason he had acted as he had.
Marten left the Squire Cross Pub and walked slowly back to his apartment. The night was crisp and clear, the moon nearly full. People were out, the traffic heavy, the air filled with the sounds of the city. He paid little attention to any of it. His thoughts were on Conor White, and he wondered if he’d invested his entire life, physically and emotionally, in trying to gain his father’s recognition; if he had chosen the career he had for no other reason than to prove himself worthy. Then, like that—a photograph and a caption in a newspaper—any possibility of it ever happening had been stripped away. The emotional blow would have been staggering, his life suddenly become meaningless. The grand heartbreak of it was that he had died never knowing his father’s note of reconciliation was in the mail.
Walking on he thought how important a figure Anne’s father had been in her life. The difference was, they had been able to share it. Some of the journey, especially that surrounding her mother’s illness and death and later her father’s, had been rough. Still, some big portion of their lives had been rich and filled with adventure and joy and love.
For the first time in years, Marten thought of his own father. Not the caring, loving adoptive father he and Rebecca had grown up with in California but his birth father. He wondered if he was still alive and, if so, where. Who he was. What he had done for a living. How old he would be. His birth mother, he knew, had died from a heart ailment only weeks after he’d been born. But his birth father, even with open public records, he’d been able to find nothing about. The name he’d given when he put him up for adoption, James Bergen, turned out to have been false, as was the address where he said he lived. Why he had lied about those things and why he had given him up were questions that would haunt him forever.
_____
Marten turned down Liverpool Road. His apartment was nearby, but he chose instead to take the long way to it and walk along the river. The lights and life of the city reflected off its surface, the rising moon giving it an almost magical silver shimmer. For a moment he thought of the young curly-haired man who had murdered Theo Haas. His gut feeling, as he’d chased him toward the Brandenburg Gate, had been right—that he was not a professional killer but a madman. Or, in retrospect, an overzealous critic. Disliking a book or play or film