The Hadrian Memorandum - Allan Folsom [33]
“Nothing. I’m sorry,” he said and set the packaged cell phone on the counter. “Just the phone and the card, please.”
7:38 A.M.
Marten walked down the corridor, throwaway phone and phone card in a plastic Musikfone bag tucked into his wheeled suitcase, barely aware of where he was or the people around him. How could he have been so blind, so naïve?
Father Willy had told him everything as they were descending from the rain forest in the seconds before they heard gunfire and the two boys came running and yelling.
“I trusted you, Mr. Marten, because I had to,” he’d said. “I could not give you the photographs because there is no way to know who you might run into when we part. Hopefully, you have clear memories of what you have seen and what I have told you. Take that information with you and leave Bioko as quickly as you can. My brother is in Berlin. He is a very capable man. I hope that by the time you reach him neither he nor your American politician friend will have need for you to tell them any of this. Tell them anyway.”
Have need for him to TELL THEM?
Of course not—when his brother would have the photographs right in front of him!
Somehow Father Willy had managed to get them to him, maybe via the regular mail as he’d thought earlier or maybe some other, even simpler, way. If he was right, and he was certain he was, that was where they would be—with Theo Haas in Berlin.
The trouble was, if he could figure it out, how long would it be before Conor White and/or the major and the hawk-faced soldier put things together? How long would it be before they looked into Father Willy’s background and found that despite different last names and lives worlds apart, he and the famed novelist Theo Haas were brothers?
Once they did, the race would be on to get to Haas first. When that happened and the photos were retrieved, then everything Father Willy and his villagers had done and died for would either become a very public justification for the army to continue its barbarous rampage or vanish into thin air at Conor White’s bidding.
To Marten, neither was acceptable. Theo Haas had to be reached and warned, told he was in grave danger and instructed to take the photographs to the police. On second thought, that could lead to unintended consequences if they fell into the hands of someone who recognized their importance and sold them to the tabloids or simply posted them on the Internet. If that occurred, the government of Equatorial Guinea would have achieved exactly what it wanted without having lifted a finger. No, he had to handle the whole thing delicately and with caution, while at the same time remembering that the life of Theo Haas might soon be in severe jeopardy. What Marten had, or hoped he had, was a small window of opportunity before the others realized who Haas was and what his brother, in all probability, had done.
He was in already in Paris. Berlin was a short plane ride away. He had to get there as quickly as he could and without attracting attention.
7:42 A.M.
18
7:45 A.M.
Marten walked hurriedly across the terminal looking for an electronic airline departure board and a listing of the next flight to Berlin. Suddenly the idea that someone might be following him, a thought he had dismissed as foolish only moments earlier, became a very real problem. The last thing he needed was for someone tailing him to see him board a plane to the German capital and report it.
He glanced over his shoulder.
No sign of the jowly man. No sign of the man in khakis and blue golf shirt. No sign of Anne Tidrow or her gray-haired friend. Maybe he was being overly cautious. If he was, so be it.
Thirty feet ahead was a departure board. Again he glanced over his shoulder. All he saw was strangers. Seconds later he was there and studying the departure list.
Twenty yards behind him a bearded young man in jeans and a PARIS, FRANCE sweatshirt with a backpack over one shoulder stopped and raised a hand casually to his mouth as if to stifle a cough.
“This is Two,” he said quietly into a tiny microphone