The Hadrian Memorandum - Allan Folsom [7]
Two seconds passed, then Truex replied.
Photographs?
CONOR WHITE: Yeah. Clear as day. No doubt about who our guys are if somebody wanted to examine it. I’m included with the other ops. I’ve seen several of the pics myself, computer-printed hard copies. They were taken last week. All have date codes.
LOYAL TRUEX: Have the photos been distributed?
CW: Not that we know. The copies I saw were brought to our guys in the field by a local native who wanted to sell them.
LT: Who took them?
CW: Old German priest in Bioko. The army got him, he’s in a coma. His place was searched. His printer found and destroyed. Digital camera found, too. Only camera he had. No photographs, no extra prints discovered. The memory card was new. The old one with the photos is missing.
LT: What if he e-mailed the pictures somewhere?
CW: There is no Internet connection in Bioko South, where he lived. To send them he would have had to use an E.G. government, Striker, or SimCo facility in Malabo, only places that have IT connections. He didn’t.
LT: Camera cell phone transmission?
CW: His only cell phone was old. Had no camera technology. Cell transmission from Bioko South is unreliable anyway.
LT: He could have faxed the printer copies.
CW: Fax machine was found in his office, broken. Two more in the village. Both checked for recent communication. None in six months for one, three months for the other. Both destroyed. Owners now deceased. Ongoing check for more machines in surrounding villages. More—local telephone company records accessed. So far no fax or cell-photo transmissions to anywhere other than E.G. in last six weeks. Locals under us checking number by number now. Sense nothing sent, area still too primitive.
LT: What about regular mail service? He could have mailed them.
CW: Mail service from the south is erratic at best. Pickups would have gone to central post office in Malabo. Only possible tracking was if he sent them via registered mail. There is no record that he did. If he did send them via regular mail, they would be impossible to trace.
LT: CRITICAL—retrieve and destroy photographic evidence of any kind. Paper, electronic, etc. MOST IMPORTANT—locate, retrieve, and destroy the camera’s ORIGINAL MEMORY CARD. Locate and destroy any local computer or printer that might have copies on the hard drive or memory. FURTHER: Find and challenge ANYONE who might have seen the photos. Find out what they know/who they might have talked to and act accordingly. If any of this gets out it could shift the Ryder Commission spotlight directly to E.G., then swing it right back to Iraq. DO WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE AND DO IT FAST. PAY WHATEVER IT COSTS. LEAVE NO TRAIL. We can’t have any of this go public.
CW: Wilco. As stated, retrieval process already under way.
LT: Keep me posted.
With that Loyal Truex signed off, leaving Conor White alone to breathe and reflect in the darkened cabin of his SimCo motor home.
“Right,” he said finally, his accent clearly upper-class British boarding school.
He’d known Loyal Truex since the First Gulf War when British SAS and U.S. Army Ranger advance teams went deep behind enemy lines to gather intelligence on Soviet Scud mobile missile launchers. They’d spent three nights and four days crammed into a tiny cave within a camel’s breath of a large contingent of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard, where the slightest mistake or lack of discipline by either of them would have cost them their lives. Since Hadrian’s foray into Iraq just after the beginning of the Second Gulf War he’d worked both with Truex and for him, and more than once in the field. As a result he not only respected Truex’s leadership abilities and the logic behind his thinking, he wholly understood the orders he had just been given: Find and challenge anyone who might have seen the photos. Do what needs to be done. Pay whatever it costs. Leave no trail. Translated it meant: Locate all possible recipients of the photographs; confront