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By Root 828 0

and headed for some town or city that lay outside of Berlin proper and its heavy blanket of police. Suddenly he began to wonder just where Erlanger was taking them and what would happen when they got there. Getting out of Berlin was one thing, getting out of Germany quite another, because there would be intense law enforcement presence at the airports, metro, train, and bus stations. Seemingly the only way out would be for Erlanger to drive them across the border himself. Maybe that was his intention. Maybe Anne had worked that part out, too, but it was unlikely; since she still had no idea where the photographs were, it would be impossible for her to give Erlanger or anyone else a destination. Telling her where they were—“if” they were—was something he’d so far managed to avoid but was a subject he knew would come up as soon they reached their destination.

He’d known from the moment they’d left the Adlon that at some point he’d have to tell her something, especially when he realized that she might actually be able to get him out from under the noses of the police, but just how much to reveal was tricky. Tell her too much and she wouldn’t need him, might even turn him over to Franck just to get him out of the way. Tell her nothing and he would get no farther than wherever Erlanger was taking them now.

The answer, he decided, was to wait and see where that was and what the circumstances were when they got there.

9:57 A.M.

44

BERLIN, THE TIERGARTEN, NEUER LAKE. 10:10 A.M.

They looked like Mutt and Jeff as they walked down a wooded path at the water’s edge, their jacket collars turned up against the drizzle—the six-foot six-inch Emil Franck, alongside five-foot nine-inch Yuri Kovalenko. Kovalenko spoke a hesitating German. Franck’s Russian was as passable. Consequently they held their conversation in English.

Their primary order of business: the photographs and, with luck, the memory card from the camera that recorded them. Neither man knew what the photos were of or if they even existed. What brought the two together was the promise of the objects’ importance and the endeavor to retrieve them.

10:15 A.M.

The two turned a blind corner near an inlet, startling several ducks into flight. Franck stopped to watch them fly out over the lake, then land in the water a safe distance from shore. For a moment he stood there enjoying the simple pleasure of observing wildlife. Finally he reached into his jacket and took out photographs of Marten and Anne Tidrow. Marten’s was made from a frame of the cell phone images circulated to the media; Tidrow’s was from a Striker Oil web site.

Kovalenko glanced at them and put them in his pocket. “Thank you, Hauptkommissar. I have previously seen a photograph of Ms.Tidrow. Mr. Marten, I already know something of.”

“You are referring to his employment as a landscape architect in England and that he was in Equatorial Guinea when the brother of Theo Haas was murdered.”

“Yes.” Kovalenko nodded. “That and a little more.”

“You have information we don’t.”

“At one time he was a homicide investigator in the Los Angeles Police Department.”

“What?”

“Good one, too.”

“How do you know this?”

Kovalenko smiled. “It’s a long story, Hauptkommissar. Just appreciate that I do.” His smile faded. “It is only a matter of time before your excellent police force apprehends both him and Ms. Tidrow. You realize we cannot have that happen.”

“Perhaps he will get lucky and escape,” Franck said flatly, and the two walked on. Tall German, short Russian. Gray sky. Incessant drizzle.

Kovalenko smiled thinly. It was safe to assume “perhaps” had little to do with it. By now he could have had a much clearer photograph of Marten to hand around. Say, one requested from British authorities, a copy retrieved from his passport or driver’s license. But such a thing would only serve to make it easier for the public to spot him and alert the police. Alternatively, he might well have made arrangements that, in one way or another, would allow Marten and his companion to evade his own massive dragnet.

“Yes, perhaps he