The Hadrian Memorandum - Allan Folsom [40]
11:35 A.M.
MADRID, BARAJAS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT. SAME TIME.
Tired, but happy to be finally home after a flight delay of nearly two hours in Paris because of mechanical problems, Marita Lozano and her medical-student charges—Rosa, Luis, Gilberto, and Ernesto—left Iberia baggage claim, passed through the customs area, and went out into the arrivals hall on their way to the Metro that would take them into the heart of the city.
The area was crowded with friends, relatives, business associates, and others gathered to meet arriving passengers. Among them were perhaps a dozen limousine drivers, most of them in dark suits and white shirts, holding cardboard signs that were hand-lettered with the names of the clients they’d been hired to pick up.
“Marita!” Rosa was the first to notice. “A sign with your name.”
Puzzled, Marita looked to the bank of limousine drivers. A handsome young man was holding a sign that read DR. LOZANO.
“Some other and richer Dr. Lozano.” Marita said with a laugh and kept walking.
As they passed, the man suddenly approached. “Marita Lozano?”
“Yes.”
“I have a limousine to take you into the city.”
“Me?”
“Yes, and your friends.”
“I don’t understand.”
He smiled. “It was paid for by the oil company in Bioko. To thank you for your work there and help compensate for your trouble with the army. I was instructed to take each of you to your homes.”
Marita looked at him carefully. Something didn’t feel right.
“That’s very nice,” she said politely. “But I think we’ll just take the Metro.”
“Please, doctor, the company insists. You have all had a very long trip.”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, come on, Marita.” Rosa giggled. “We’re all tired. It’s very nice of them to do this.”
Luis grinned. “Who wants to take the Metro when we have a limo?”
“Nobody,” Ernesto added.
Marita hesitated a moment longer, still unsure.
Rosa pressed her again. “Marita . . .”
Finally she gave in. “Alright, Rosa, we’ll take the limo.”
“Good.” The driver smiled warmly, then took her bag and Rosa’s and led them toward the exit.
23
BERLIN, HOTEL MOZART SUPERIOR,
94 FRIEDRICHSTRASSE, ROOM 413. 1:35 P.M.
Freshly showered and shaved, Nicholas Marten stood in the window looking down at the street below. He was barefoot and bare chested, wearing jeans and nothing else. The dark blue cell phone was in his hand. He hesitated for the briefest moment and then, for the third time since he’d checked into the hotel ninety minutes earlier, he called the number President Harris had given him for Theo Haas.
Again it rang through. After the fourth ring he again got the husky-male-voice recording. Again he clicked off.
“Damn it,” he swore angrily. Where the hell was Haas? What was he doing? When would he be home?
Suddenly it occurred to him that the Nobel laureate might be traveling and not in the city at all. Then what? Try to have the president or Joe Ryder track him down? That could take days, even longer. In the meantime, where were the photographs, assuming Father Willy had indeed sent them to his brother? Where? Sitting in a branch of the Berlin post office? In Haas’s home, just lying around, opened or unopened? Or did Haas have them with him? Was he at this moment preparing to reveal them as only an irascible world-famous writer could, and most likely would?
As quickly Marten thought of something else: that maybe Conor White’s people or operatives from the Equatorial Guinea military hadn’t been as slow to put Father Willy and Theo Haas together as brothers as he’d first thought. Maybe one group or the other had already reached him. If so he could be in grave danger or even dead. In what could only be described as an urgent, near-involuntary reaction, he lifted the phone and punched in Theo Haas’s number again.
Once more the call rang through. Once more he listened