The Hadrian Memorandum - Allan Folsom [89]
“Why did he change it and move to another country and take up another profession? Corruption?”
“He’s not a policeman at heart, Hauptkommissar. I think he wanted to wholly extricate himself from that world. He preferred to see the beauty in life instead of bearing such close witness to the horror of what the human race does to itself every day.”
“Yet now he’s going to become part of that same horror.”
“It is his fate, Hauptkommissar.” Kovalanko pointed a finger skyward. “Written long ago in the stars. At least he will have had a few years of peace and, hopefully, joy.”
“You believe in fate, Kovalenko?”
Kovalenko smiled. “If I didn’t, I, too, would be out planting flowers. Who the hell wouldn’t? If it weren’t for fate, everyone in the world would be out planting flowers. It would seem a very reasonable thing to do. Few, like Marten, recognize what’s happening and do something about it. The rest of us merely accept it and simply go about the business at hand.” The humor left Kovalenko’s eyes. “Until, as Marten is about to discover, our true fate catches up.”
“And then?”
“And then—that’s that.”
1:45 A.M.
54
FRANCE, BORDEAUX-MÉRIGNAC AIRPORT. 1:50 A.M.
Marten crossed the lighted tarmac in the area dedicated to civil aviation. A dozen planes were parked equidistant from each other. All dark. Locked for the night. The thirteenth, the Cessna D-VKRD, was farthest out, its interior lights on. By now it would have been fueled and ready for takeoff. Anne and their pilot, Brigitte Marie Reier, having used the terminal’s toilet facilities and had something to eat, would be in the plane waiting for him.
Before, he’d purposely stayed back, remaining with the aircraft, letting the women go inside first. There’d been no real reason, other than to be polite and wanting to stretch his legs, and to be alone and think. And for a brief time he had, reflecting back on his conversation with Anne.
Memories of his late, beloved Caroline had moved him deeply, as had the horrors of Equatorial Guinea. The deaths that occurred there screamed out, leaving nothing but unfathomable anger and damning hatred for the carnival of perpetrators. All of it complicated by his own mental and physical exhaustion.
The truth was he was coming apart. He’d thought he’d left the savagery of violent death behind when he’d begun his new life in England. Then, from nowhere, he’d been thrust headlong into a world far darker and more monstrous than anything he’d seen on the streets of L.A. Suddenly he was afraid he was no longer capable of operating in it, that the self-protective, steel-edged coping mechanism every homicide cop develops to deal with murder on a daily basis had left him. If he was to continue, he would need that attitude and those skills. Without them, he might very well be killed himself and take Anne along with him. Especially if he had to go up against Conor White and whatever mercenaries he was sure to have accompanying him.
Instinct told him to walk away now. Say to hell with Anne, the photographs, Joe Ryder, even the president. Leave the Cessna where it was without a word or a note or anything. Just find his way back to Manchester and the quiet beauty and emotional safety of his life there. Make believe none of this had ever happened.
He might have done it, too, or at least tried, if he hadn’t suddenly been jolted by the thundering roar of a corporate jet taking off less than two hundred yards from where he stood. He’d watched it disappear into the night sky, its exterior navigational lights quickly fading to nothing. In that moment he heard Erlanger’s words again.
“Stay away from the old contacts. You got away with it this once. For your sake, don’t try it again.”
Maybe they’d gotten away with it and maybe they hadn’t.
Immediately he thought of the jet aircraft he’d requested and then of the slow ’54 Chevy of a Cessna they’d been given. Had it been all that was available or was there some other reason?
In the next second he’d gone to the plane and walked around it, looking at the engines and under the wings, then