The Hadrian Memorandum - Allan Folsom [43]
Marten ran harder, trying to stay with him. He saw the young man weave in and out through the cars, tour buses, taxicabs, and tourists congesting the area in front of the Brandenburg Gate. Again he glanced back. Again Marten saw his face. It was grim and wild and strangely triumphant. In that instant he had the gut feeling that he was chasing not a professional killer but a madman.
5:20 P.M.
Anne Tidrow was probably twenty seconds behind Marten and running nearly as hard. She saw him cut into a throng of tourists and then disappear within them. She kept going, pushing through the crowd, but not seeing him.
The sudden murder of the old man had thrown everything into turmoil. Who was he? Did he know about the photographs? If so, what had he told Marten before he was killed, and in what direction, if any, had he pointed him? If she lost Marten now and he went after the pictures instead of back to his hotel, she might never find out.
She kept on, taking the same route Marten had, moving into the thick of the crowd that was suddenly abuzz with tension in the wake of one man chasing another through them. She kept going, wishing now she had brought at least one of her contacts with her. For a moment she lost sight of him and almost panicked. Then there he was, less than a dozen feet in front of her, stopped in the congregation of tourists and beside a line of waiting taxis looking furiously around for the killer. Instinctively she started to look for him herself, thinking, like Marten, that he was hiding somewhere in the throng.
Suddenly came a violent rush of sirens. Green-and-white Berlin police vehicles screamed in from all directions. In seconds uniforms were everywhere, shoving through the crowd, looking for the murderer. For a moment she was uncertain what to do: confront Marten about the old man, in the event he darted off in the confusion and she lost him for good, or take a chance and stay back, see where he went next. Suddenly it made no difference. People were gesturing toward Marten.
The instant was horrific as both she and he realized what was happening. People had seen him tear through them in a wild rush. They thought he was the one the police were chasing and were pointing him out.
Anne moved, and fast. In a heartbeat she was at Marten’s side, taking his arm. “Come on, darling,” she said loud enough to be heard by people around her, “we’re late.” Abruptly she pulled open the door to a waiting taxi.
“Hotel Mozart Superior, right away, please,” she said to the driver, then shoved Marten into the cab and got in beside him.
“Of course,” the driver said in accented English, then moved the taxi off quickly, closely following another cab through the melee. In seconds they were gone and traveling back down Unter den Linden in the direction of Marten’s hotel.
5:24 P.M.
“Where the hell did you come from?” Marten stared at her, astounded by her presence, by everything that had just happened, and by what was happening now. “How did you know I was in Berlin, or where I was in the city, or where I’m staying?”
“I know everything, darling. You’re keeping a lover. I want to meet her,” Anne scolded Marten sharply and loudly enough to be heard by the driver. “In Paris you told me you were taking a British Airways flight to London. But that was after you’d already asked an Air France crew the directions to another gate. You do things like that, you’d better be careful no one sees you. Who, or what, should I expect to meet? Let me guess, a long-legged blonde, about twenty-four, with big tits.”
Suddenly she looked up and saw the driver watching them in the mirror. “Would you please turn on the radio? We’d like to have some music.”
“American?”
“Anything, thank you.”
Immediately the driver turned on the vehicle’s radio and tuned it to a satellite channel and U.S. country music boomed out.
Marten glared at her. “I asked you how you knew where I was and where I’m staying.”
“You may remember that I sit on the board of directors of a rather large oil company.