The Hadrian Memorandum (10 page)

23

BERLIN, HOTEL MOZART SUPERIOR,

94 FRIEDRICHSTRASSE, ROOM 413. 1:35 P.M.

Freshly showered and shaved, Nicholas Marten stood in the window looking down at the street below. He was barefoot and bare chested, wearing jeans and nothing else. The dark blue cell phone was in his hand. He hesitated for the briefest moment and then, for the third time since he’d checked into the hotel ninety minutes earlier, he called the number President Harris had given him for Theo Haas.

Again it rang through. After the fourth ring he again got the husky-male-voice recording. Again he clicked off.

“Damn it,” he swore angrily. Where the hell was Haas? What was he doing? When would he be home?

Suddenly it occurred to him that the Nobel laureate might be traveling and not in the city at all. Then what? Try to have the president or Joe Ryder track him down? That could take days, even longer. In the meantime, where were the photographs, assuming Father Willy had indeed sent them to his brother? Where? Sitting in a branch of the Berlin post office? In Haas’s home, just lying around, opened or unopened? Or did Haas have them with him? Was he at this moment preparing to reveal them as only an irascible world-famous writer could, and most likely would?

As quickly Marten thought of something else: that maybe Conor White’s people or operatives from the Equatorial Guinea military hadn’t been as slow to put Father Willy and Theo Haas together as brothers as he’d first thought. Maybe one group or the other had already reached him. If so he could be in grave danger or even dead. In what could only be described as an urgent, near-involuntary reaction, he lifted the phone and punched in Theo Haas’s number again.

Once more the call rang through. Once more he listened as it rang four times. He was expecting the recording to click on once again when instead a male voice answered.

“Yes?” came a grumble in German.

“My name is Marten, Nicholas Marten. I’m trying to reach—”

“You’ve got him,” Theo Haas said sharply in English.

“I would like to meet with you. Could I come to your apartment?”

“Across from the Tiergarten. Platz der Republik. The grassy park in front of the Reichstag. Five o’clock. I’m an old man in a green cap and carrying a walking stick. I’ll be sitting on a park bench near Scheidemannstrasse. If you’re not there by ten minutes past I will leave.”

There was an abrupt click as he hung up and the phone went dead.

“Well,” Marten said out loud and with relief. At least no one else had gotten to him. Not yet anyway.

PLATZ DER REPUBLIK. 4:45 P.M.

Marten came into the park early, determined not to miss Haas through some happenstance beyond his control. In front of him the Platz der Republik sprawled for nearly a quarter of a mile and was filled with seemingly hundreds of people taking advantage of a warm early-summer afternoon. To his right was the massive edifice that was the historic Reichstag, Germany’s parliament building. He vaguely remembered that it had been burned down, purportedly by the Nazis in 1933, and was then rebuilt and reoccupied by the parliament in 1999 as a symbol of German unity following the Cold War. The words carved above its main facade in 1916 had been restored as well—DEM DEUTSCHEN VOLKE (“To the German people”). Maybe the historical significance of it was something Haas was trying to impress on Marten and the reason he chose to meet in its shadow. Or maybe it had no meaning at all. What was curious was why he had chosen to meet outdoors in public rather than in the privacy of his home, especially when he knew that what Marten had to tell him concerned his brother. He was known for being a “character,” and so maybe it was a whim, or maybe he simply didn’t want strangers in his home.

4:50 P.M.

Marten reached the far end of the park and turned back, staying close to the pathway that ran near Scheidemannstrasse. He looked carefully at every bench he passed, most of which were occupied, and then beyond them to the crowd in the park and what suddenly seemed like the impossible chore of sorting through them to find an old man in a green cap with a walking stick.

4:55 P.M.

He arrived at the Reichstag building and turned back, retracing his steps. Still no green cap, no old man with a walking stick.

4:57 P.M.

He stopped at the far end of the park and once again turned back. What if Haas didn’t show up? All he could do was call him and hope to hell he answered and that someone else hadn’t gotten to him in the meantime. It made him think of the ten-minute timetable Haas had given him. Why had he done that? Once again he wondered why the old man had insisted they meet in a place as public and crowded as this. Maybe it was simply that he felt safer meeting a stranger that way, especially in view of what had happened to his brother in Bioko. Still, a quiet restaurant or café would have accomplished the same thing.

Again Marten looked around. Still nothing. Then from the corner of his eye he saw a taxi suddenly turn out of traffic on Scheidemannstrasse and pull to the curb. A moment passed, and the rear passenger door opened and an old man in a green cap carrying a walking stick got out. He closed the door with a ferocious bang and started into the park and toward a nearby bench. It was exactly five o’clock. Theo Haas had arrived.

24

Anne Tidrow had been a good twenty yards behind Marten when he entered the park. She stayed with him until he reached the far end and turned back. At that point she stepped behind a group of chattering tourists and waited to see where he would go next.

She’d followed him to the Platz der Republik by cab, watching him turn the corner from Friedrichstrasse onto the boulevard Unter den Linden and walk several more city blocks until he reached the historic Brandenburg Gate. There, he’d turned right and then left before crossing into the park in front of the Reichstag. It was then she’d left the cab and pursued him on foot.

Her Lufthansa flight from Paris had touched down in Berlin a little more than an hour after his. Immediately she’d called her “past lives, fond memories, old friends” contact and learned that he’d taken a cab to the Hotel Mozart Superior and checked in, and that very soon afterward a private investigator had taken up residence in the lobby, carefully watching the comings and goings of people who passed through it.

Twenty-five minutes later she’d checked into the nearby Hotel Adlon Kempinski, keeping a taxi at hire just outside. After a little more than three nail-biting hours and numerous cell phone exchanges with the private investigator in the Mozart Superior’s lobby, he called to tell her that Marten had just left his key at the front desk and was on his way out. Seconds later he reported that he was following him up Friedrichstrasse toward Unter den Linden.

In less than three minutes—wearing dark glasses, her hair pulled back, and dressed as a tourist in jeans, athletic shoes, and a stylish denim jacket—she was in the hired cab rushing in that direction, concerned all the while that the investigator would lose him if he suddenly hailed a passing taxi himself. And then she’d seen him, just as he turned the corner and started down Unter den Linden.

She was now less than thirty yards away watching Marten approach an old man in a green cap with a walking stick who had just seated himself on a park bench. She saw Marten reach him and say something, then watch as the elderly gentleman studied him carefully before gesturing for Marten to sit down. She slowed, then stopped behind two boys kicking a soccer ball back and forth between them. She wanted to move closer in the hope of overhearing what was being said, but then determined it was too risky and stayed where she was. At this point the last thing she needed was for Marten to look up and recognize her.

How long she stood there watching she didn’t know. All around her was activity—the boys with the soccer ball, children at a birthday party chasing each other, people flying kites in the light wind, dogs scampering after tossed Frisbees, lovers walking hand in hand oblivious to the world around them. Others, many still in business clothes who looked as if they’d left work early for nothing more than to enjoy the late-afternoon sun, lounged on benches or lay sprawled in the grass.

Suddenly, not twenty feet from the bench where Marten and the old man sat talking, there was a loud explosion of firecrackers, thirty or forty or more going off at once. People cried out in surprise. Startled children shrieked. Dogs barked. Even Marten reacted, jumping from the bench and staring in the direction of the explosions. In the next instant horror struck. A young, curly-haired man in a black sweater appeared from nowhere and went to the old man on the bench. A knife flashed in his hand. A second later he dragged it across the old man’s throat, stared at his work for a heartbeat, then ran off toward Scheidemannstrasse.

Marten saw the assailant just as a woman screamed. In an instant he was at the old man’s side. He lifted his slumped head, held it gently, then slowly set it back down and raced off after the curly-haired attacker. In three steps he was at the curb. Then, dodging traffic, he darted hazardously across Scheidemannstrasse, and chased after him at a dead run heading toward the Brandenburg Gate.

5:16 P.M.

25

5:18 P.M.

Marten could see him forty yards ahead nearing the Brandenburg Gate. As he reached it he glanced back, and Marten saw his face clearly. It was young and thin, with wild narrow-set eyes under that great shock of black curly hair. Who was he? Why had he wanted to kill Theo Haas? And so viciously and in public? Had he been sent by Conor White? Or by the Equatorial Guinean army? Had he trailed him from his apartment? Did it mean someone already had the photographs and Haas knew it, and knew who they were, and they wanted him silenced quickly, before he told someone? If so, why hadn’t he tried to kill Marten, too?

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. We have friends everywhere.”

Marten glanced at the driver, then looked back to Anne and lowered his voice, uncertain the music would mask their conversation. “You followed me from Malabo to Paris to Berlin and now to here. Why?”

Anne looked to the driver and gave him a big smile. “I like it. Turn it up!”

He grinned back and did as she asked; the music blared.

Immediately Anne turned to Marten. “I want the photographs. And don’t say ‘what photographs?’ ”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes you do. And you know where they are. The old man told you.”

Marten smiled evenly. “Too bad your hearing wasn’t as good as your eyesight. The subject of photographs never came up.”

Just then Garth Brooks’s “Friends in Low Places” boomed from the taxi’s radio, and Anne leaned in close. “I want the pictures, Mr. Marten. I’ll pay you what you want for them.”

“Whatever these pictures are, they obviously mean a lot to you. Why?”

“Don’t play with me,” she snapped. “You know what the pictures are of and who is in them. I want them back because the safety and well-being of our people in Equatorial Guinea depends on it.”

“Which people are ‘our people,’ Ms. Tidrow? The fellow chasing me through Charles de Gaulle Airport? The Striker Oil board of directors? SimCo mercenaries? Certainly not your friend President Tiombe or his army that is slaughtering people by the hundreds even as you and I cruise around Berlin.”

“Striker Oil employees, Mr. Marten. People who work for us have always been treated as family. We guarantee their security anywhere they are working.” She softened a little. “Please, Mr. Marten. The photographs are very important to me personally. I want them back.”

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Then why did you tell me you were going to London and you came here instead? A few hours later you met with the old man in the park. That meeting was about the photographs. Who he is, or rather was, I don’t know. Whoever he was, he told you where to find them. I don’t know who you work for or why. But whatever they’re paying you I’ll pay you a lot more.”

“Let me tell you something about the ‘old man,’ Ms. Tidrow,” Marten said quietly. It was clear that neither she nor Conor White had yet made the connection between Father Willy and Theo Haas. It meant they were guessing that he knew about the photographs and where they were. “He was a rather famous German author who had written, among many things, several very good books on the design of city parks. You verified that I was a landscape architect, so it shouldn’t surprise you that I changed my plans and came to Berlin when he agreed to see me at the last minute. I met him in the park so that he could discuss his work.”

“I don’t believe you, Mr. Marten.” What little softness there’d been was suddenly gone.

“That’s unfortunate, but you don’t have much choice.”

Just then the taxi pulled sharply to the curb and stopped. Immediately Anne turned to the driver. “What is it?”

The driver turned down the music, looked in the mirror, and smiled. “Where you asked to be taken, madame. The Hotel Mozart Superior.”

In that next breath, Marten leaned forward and handed him a hundred-euro bill. “Please take the lady back to her hotel, or wherever she’s staying.”

Quickly he opened the door and looked to Anne. “Thanks for caring, darling. I’ll get rid of her myself. Long legs, big tits, and all.”

Then he was out of the cab and entering the Hotel Mozart Superior. A second later the taxi pulled away.

5:38 P.M.