The Hadrian Memorandum - Allan Folsom [82]
The roar of the Cessna’s engines deafened as it neared and came to a stop. Then the pilot shut them down, and for a moment the silence was almost as profound. Almost immediately the chirp of birds and the buzz of insects filtered back. All around was deep forest. The only cuts through it were the airstrip itself and the gravel road they had come in on. Not once had Erlanger brought up the subject of whose property it was, but clearly he had access to it.
The pilot’s door opened, and a woman in a flight suit climbed down. She was blond, maybe thirty-five, and attractive in a matronly sort of way.
“Her name is Brigitte,” Erlanger said. “Tell her where you want to go and she’ll get you there. Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. Neither of you saw me. None of this took place.” Abruptly he turned to Anne, the warmth and tenderness of moments before suddenly gone, replaced instead by a cold professionalism. “Stay away from the old contacts,” he warned. “You got away with it once. For your sake, don’t try it again.” He stared at her for a moment longer, then glanced at Marten and turned and walked to the van. Seconds later he got in and closed the door, then started the engine and drove off.
Never once did he look back.
6:50 P.M.
BERLIN POLICE HEADQUARTERS. 7:05 P.M.
Hauptkommissar Franck took the call on his private cell phone and immediately left the room. Detectives Bohlen and Prosser and the dozen other top investigators with them stopped what they were doing as he went out, watching in silence as the door closed behind him. They’d spent the last eight hours shoulder to shoulder with the Hauptkommissar in the dark of this high-tech situation room deep inside the building surrounded by rows of computers with floor-to-ceiling monitors sorting through mountains of information provided by officers tracking reports coming in from the field.
Franck had called them there just after ten thirty in the morning when the all but certain capture of Nicholas Marten and Anne Tidrow in the neighborhood near the Friedrichstrasse/Weidendamm Bridge had failed. The Hauptkommissar had faced them angrily and forcefully, dressing them down and citing their failure and his own, clearly and harshly.
“I was put in charge of this operation,” he’d said. “I am responsible for the decisions that failed. The suspects are still at large. Failure a second time is not acceptable. To me, to you, or the people of Berlin and Germany. I hope that is quite clear.”
The effect had been powerful and shaming and embarrassing, putting everyone on edge and spreading through the entire department within minutes. It was why, when he answered his personal cell phone and so abruptly left the room, the people there held their collective breath. Perhaps it was a major breakthrough, a tip from one of the untold number of informants only the Hauptkommissar knew. Perhaps in short order he, and then they, would learn where the suspects were and as quickly mobilize and within the hour bring the entire ordeal to a close.
7:12 P.M.
“I don’t like so many people involved,” Franck stood on the sidewalk outside the building on Platz der Luftbrücke talking on his cell phone, his back to passersby. “It will be a billiard game, you know that, one playing off two, two playing off three, who knows where it stops. Unpredictable, volatile at best, dangerous all around.”
“You are at your best when it’s like that.” Elsa’s throaty voice came back to him. “You should enjoy it, you always have. Besides, they expect it. It’s why you were called and not someone else.”
“Yes. Alright. I understand,” he said finally. “Yes. Yes. Of course.” With that he clicked off.
Hauptkommissar Emil Franck’s persona had been established early in his career as that of a man who was most successful when he worked alone. Between the ages of twenty-four and twenty-seven he had single-handedly