The Hadrian Memorandum (42 page)

114

Anne was on her knees. A young fireman with red hair poking out from under his helmet was with her, trying to help her stand up on what was once a sidewall but was now the floor of the overturned ambulance. She was a little woozy from the impact and rollover, and blood oozed from a gash above her right eye, but other than that she seemed alright. At least that was what she told the fireman. In the distance she heard the singsong of approaching sirens. She shook her head, trying to clear it. Then she saw Ryder sitting on the sidewalk partway up a hill on the far side of the street. Two firemen were attending to him.

“Easy,” the fireman helping her said calmly in English. “Can you put weight on your legs?”

She tried, then nodded.

“Good. There’s a fuel leak. We have to get out and away from the vehicle now.” He started to lead her toward the door that by now had been propped open. As he did, her mind cleared and she turned back, looking crazily around in the upside-down confusion. Nothing was where it should have been.

“What are you doing?”

“I need my bag.”

“
Senhora
. Leave it. We have to get out!”

He took her by the arm and was moving her toward the door when she saw it, thrown into the corner by the force of the crash. Abruptly she pulled away to retrieve it. He swore out loud and scrambled after her.

“
Senhora
, the vehicle is going to explode. Leave your purse, it’s not important!”

“That’s what you think.” She lunged and grabbed it just as he caught her. A second later they were out and under an increasingly cloudy sky, rushing back, away from the stricken ambulance. The smell of raw fuel was everywhere. Feet away was the wreckage of a dark blue Peugeot, its front end all but torn off. Two men in jeans and Windbreakers, one with a hand to his head, stood next to it talking with a fireman. Behind them, up the hill they had been coming down when the collision happened, she could see a gray Alfa Romeo sedan stopped in the middle of the roadway just opposite a narrow side street. A slim, bearded man in a black suit had gotten out of it and was walking down the hill toward them. Now the memory came back. The Alfa and the Peugeot were the cars that had been following them just moments after they left the hospital. Ryder had remarked about them; so had Agent Birns.

“Over here.” The redheaded fireman led her toward the area where Ryder was. The approaching sirens were closer. Everywhere she saw faces of onlookers. People gathered on the sidewalks. Faces peering from shops and apartment buildings. She looked toward Ryder and saw him get to his feet. To his left, two firefighters were lifting Mário onto some kind of gurney. Suddenly there was an ear-shattering blast of sirens. Immediately they shut down. Two fire trucks had arrived at the same time, adding to the chaos. Firemen jumped from them carrying large canisters and rushed toward the ambulance to lay a carpet of gray-white foam over the leaking fuel. A police car came in from a side street and stopped. Another followed. Uniformed officers got out and began herding the onlookers back. Then more police arrived. It was all happening in seconds. Then an ambulance came, and then one more. The sound and confusion magnified. She looked back and saw the bearded man in black gesture to the men who had been in the Peugeot. The fireman guiding her told her to watch her step and again asked if she was alright and after that asked what her name was and why she had been in the ambulance.

She told him her first name, then murmured something about not remembering where they were going or why. She stepped up on the curb near Ryder and looked around for Agent Birns. She didn’t see him. She looked to Ryder. He understood and shook his head. Then she saw two ambulance attendants run forward with a gurney. A body lay on the far sidewalk, a white sheet covering it.

A firefighter walked up carrying Birns’s briefcase and spoke with the ambulance people. There was a short conversation; then he turned and went over to a policeman. Another short conversation, and a gesture toward the wrecked ambulance. Inside the briefcase was Birns’s MP5K, and Anne knew well how to use it. She was trying to think of some way to retrieve it when the policeman took the briefcase from the fireman, then put it in the trunk of his patrol car and closed it, thereby ending any hope for recovering it she might have had.

115

12:09 P.M

Santos slowed the laundry truck long enough to let Marten change places with the anesthesiologist who had been impersonating Agent Birns and slide into the back alongside Agent Grant and the bookkeeper who had portrayed Anne. With Marten out of sight, Santos continued on toward the roadblock the Public Security Police, the Polícia de Segurança Pública, had set up to keep traffic from the accident site.

Reaching it, he stopped and leaned out, telling the police who he was and asking to be let through. His brother, he said, had been driving the ambulance involved in the crash, and he wanted to get to him right away. As a longtime ambulance driver, Santos was known by almost every uniform in the Security Police, and those at the barricade were no exception; the bronzing face makeup he’d used in his role as Moses, which at another time would have been food for scurrilous comment, they let pass, telling him to park the truck down the hill and walk in. “I have hospital personnel with me,” he said strongly and received no argument about the others accompanying him. Less than two minutes later he had parked the truck, and the four followed him back up the hill and through the police line.

They were barely ten feet inside it when Santos and the hospital people suddenly rushed forward through the crowd toward the wrecked ambulance. Marten glanced back at the police; then he and Grant followed, looking for Anne and Ryder and Birns.

The cross streets—Calçada do Duque at Rua da Condessa, where White was to meet with whoever had the radio designation 6-4—were, Santos told them, partway up the hill from the accident scene. Meaning White and his gunmen were in close proximity and could easily infiltrate the swarm of people around them. Marten touched the Glock under his jacket and glanced at Grant, who now had the backpack under his arm so that the barrel of the MP5K submachine gun was just visible in its opening, his finger pressed through a hole in the material encircling the trigger.

Forty seconds of pushing past onlookers, firemen, rescue teams, police, and just-arriving media crews and they saw Anne and Ryder. Wherever Birns was, he wasn’t with them. They moved closer. With the exception of a small bandage over Anne’s right eye, both seemed to be physically unharmed. Anne, bless her after everything, had her purse with the photographs and the copy of the memorandum thrown over her shoulder and clutched to her side.

A little closer still and they could hear Ryder telling a fire captain that he and Anne were fine and that all they needed was a taxi to take them back to their hotel. Since there was no flurry of activity around him, it was clear he had not yet identified himself. Marten saw it as an opportunity to get them out of there before he did and signaled Grant to cover him in the event White or his men made their move.

He was just starting toward them when he saw a ranking uniformed police officer, a lieutenant maybe, approach Ryder. Once he reached him there would be questions, a lot of them. Who he was, who Anne was, why they had been in the ambulance, where they had been going. At this point Anne’s identity was unimportant because once Ryder’s identity was established the U.S. Embassy would be informed, meaning the CIA would almost immediately know where he was—if White hadn’t informed them already and/or if the 6-4 designate and those who had been in the 6-2 car weren’t CIA themselves. Whatever the case, it was imperative Marten get their attention and get them away from there right then.

Anne saw him as he was coming toward her. He nodded toward the approaching policeman and shook his head. At the same time, he realized he had a far better card to play. The police themselves. White would have his hands fully tied if suddenly Ryder and Anne were put into a police car and driven from the scene.

“That cop.” Marten pulled Grant close. “The lieutenant or whoever he is. Intercept him. Show him your ID and tell him who you and Ryder are and that Anne and I are with you. You are charged with the congressman’s personal safety. There have been threats against his life. What happened here might have been an accident, it might not. Ask him to get us out of here right now. He’ll have to request permission, but once he gets it White and his gunmen will have to pull up short, at least long enough for us to try to work out something else.”

Grant nodded and moved off. Marten let his eyes sweep the crowd. If White, Patrice, or the bull-like man Anne had called Irish Jack was there, he didn’t see them. He looked back. Grant was in conversation with Ryder and the policeman. A moment passed and he saw the cop lift his radio and turn away, talking into it. Again Marten scanned the crowd.

The permission.

The bureaucracy through which police machinery everywhere worked. Radio messages back and forth would take time, and he had to assume White and/or his people would intercept the exchanges and know what was going on. So would people at the U.S. Embassy, principally the CIA’s chief of station.

He felt a drop of rain and looked up at the darkening sky. There was another drop and then another. Suddenly he felt a hand tighten around his arm. He whirled. It was Anne. Ryder and Grant were with him.

“You were right, he had to get approval,” Grant said. “He’s calling for it now.”

Suddenly Marten remembered Birns. Where was he? Anne read his expression.

“Agent Birns was killed in the accident,” she said quietly. “Mário’s hurt. I don’t know how badly.”

Marten looked at Grant. Birns had been his traveling companion-in-arms for years. They were pals, buddies, as close as you get without being brothers. Maybe even closer than brothers. He knew that awful gut-eating loss too well from his days on the LAPD. He also knew there was nothing you could do about it but say a prayer for him and move on, as Grant was doing now.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and Grant nodded a solemn thanks. Then Marten looked at Anne. She was pale and still a little shaky. The bandage over her eye was the work of paramedics, and she limped a little, as did Ryder. “You okay?”

“Yes.”

He looked at her purse and grinned in admiration. “The lady seems to know how to hold on to the important things in life.”

“Once in a while.” She smiled softly. “Once in a while.”

Just then the rain that been teasing began to come down harder. A moment later the lieutenant returned. Two uniforms were with him. None of them paid Marten or Anne the slightest attention. Ryder was their man. Permission for a police escort had been granted. A large unmarked SUV was being brought up as they spoke.

“The U.S. ambassador was informed,” the lieutenant told Ryder. “He asked that we take you directly to the embassy. You’ll be quite safe there.”

“Thank you,” Ryder said graciously and then looked at Grant and Marten. His expression reinforced what Marten had known all along. The embassy was the last place they would be safe. Somewhere along the way they would have to make an abrupt change of plan.

12:22 P.M.

116

12:28 P.M.

Conor White knew what to look for—a black unmarked Toyota Land Cruiser coming down from the accident site followed by a white unmarked Ford. The driver and sergeant in the Toyota and the men in the tail car would be members of the Public Security Police Special Operations Group—Grupo de Operações Especiais, or GOE—highly trained counterterrorist police.

The GOE vehicles would follow the road down to Rossio Square, then circle it and drive up the verdant Avenida da Liberdade on the way to the U.S. Embassy. Carlos Branco had given him the information seconds after getting off the phone with the CIA/Lisbon station chief, Jeremy Moyer. The route had been laid out by the GOE and approved by the embassy.

The GOE plan gave them all they needed, a map to follow and a time frame in which to work. The entire trip from beginning to end would take no more than fifteen minutes. Somewhere in between they would strike. Where, when, and how was up to White. Branco was, and had always been, the “painter” here, both the setup man and the backup for White. Whatever else might be required he was wholly open to, as long as he got paid. A sum that in this case would be substantial. No matter what White had personally promised him on the side, his wages here, one hundred and fifty thousand euros, would be picked up by Moyer and paid out through a clandestine fund set up by the Agency.

Branco’s final radio communication with White had come immediately after the accident involving the fire truck and the ambulance. By then both men had realized Marten would have taken Moses’s radio unit and be monitoring their exchanges. White had set the location near the accident scene deliberately, betting Marten would rush there to protect Anne and Ryder, thereby bringing the three of them together in a very manageable line of fire. After that all radio contact with Branco ceased, their communication continuing by cell phone only.

That Marten had taken the bait was affirmed by the
A Melhor Lavanderia, Lisboa
laundry truck parked just up the hill from the street where White, Patrice, and Irish Jack now waited in the black UN-license-plated Mercedes. Branco and three of his former Portuguese army commandos were in the Alfa Romeo parked on the same street less than a hundred paces behind them. The plan was to wait for the Land Cruiser and Ford tail car to pass, then follow them in traffic around Rossio Square, past the Metro station, and up Avenida da Liberdade to where Rua Barata Salgueiro crossed it. It was there they would strike. Irish Jack would accelerate alongside the procession as if to pass it. At the last second he would abruptly turn in front of the Land Cruiser, cutting it off. In the meantime Branco’s Alfa would pull in tight behind the tailing Ford. The GOE was a highly respected antiterrorist SWAT-type organization whose members had been trained in the same manner as the British SAS, White’s primary regiment, which meant he knew their tactics and mind-set. He also knew that the only way to defeat them was by striking hard and fast, with Branco’s gunmen taking out the GOEs in the tail car while he, Patrice, and Irish Jack attacked the Land Cruiser. That a number of policemen would be killed meant little. Lisbon was a war zone, no different than if it were a city in Iraq or Afghanistan. As he had said—thirty seconds and it would be done. Then Branco and his men would be in the Alfa and gone, and they would be disappearing in the city’s myriad of narrow, twisting streets, racing to the airport and the waiting Falcon 50 for the flight back to Bioko.

“Colonel,” Patrice said quietly, his eyes on the street above them, his Quebecois accent as distinct as ever, “here they come.”

12:30 P.M.