The Hadrian Memorandum Read Free

The rain-soaked soil was so slick it might well have been ice. He went faster. Then faster still.
    Suddenly his right arm circled a vine, and he pulled it in tight. There was a wrenching jolt and he stopped, face up against the sky. For the briefest moment he clung there, the tropical rain washing over him. Then he let out a huge breath and looked down. His legs stretched out over nothing. He had come that close to going over the edge and plunging into whatever was below. He flashed on the cascade of falls he’d seen when he’d been with Father Willy less than an hour before. Remembered looking down and seeing them disappear into the jungle floor a thousand feet beneath. If that was the terrain here, he had come within inches of his death.
    Suddenly his chest heaved and he made some kind of animal cry, half sheer horror and half release. From somewhere far above he heard the voices of the soldiers. They were rough and raw and urgent. He had no idea how far he had fallen or if there was a way they could work around and come at him from the side or if they had ropes and would just rappel down to where he was.
    He looked to his left and saw another vine. Beyond it was another. If he could use them to move across the face of the cliff or steep hillock or whatever it was, maybe he could find solid footing on the other side. If so, he might work his way into the jungle and hide there until darkness came. Something, he estimated, that would occur in no more than two hours.
    He took a deep breath and grasped the vine tightly. Another breath and he swung toward the one just beyond it. He reached it and grabbed hold, then carefully tested its strength. Satisfied, he let go of the first vine. He repeated the procedure once and then again. Now he could see his destination, the edge of the ravine into which he had fallen. The rain came down harder. If the soldiers were still up there, he had no way to know.
    Another breath and he swung again, almost reaching the far side before the momentum pulled him back. He tested the vine and swung once more. Closer this time, but not quite. Another swing and he almost had it, his fingers brushing the shrubbery that lined the edge before his momentum carried him back.
    “Easy,” he breathed and swung again. This time he went a little further. The shrubs were right there. He reached out, grabbed hold of the closest plant, and—suddenly there was a sickening jolt as the vine pulled free of the soil above. For the briefest instant he hung in midair; then came a shower of rocks and mud and he plunged backward into nothing.
    He heard himself scream as he fell. For a second he thought he saw water, a fast-rushing stream cutting through the jungle far beneath him. He kept falling and falling. Then he hit something hard and everything went black.

3
    Seconds or minutes or days passed before Marten opened his eyes and looked up. He was alive, he thought, and wet and moving. The night sky above, what little he could see of it through the thick canopy of trees, was bright and starlit. Then he realized that he was in a river of some kind and the current was carrying him downstream.
    It was then he remembered Father Willy and the photographs and the soldiers, his mad escape through the jungle, the vine and its pulling free, his terrifying fall. The thing he had hit hard, that had knocked him unconscious, had been the river; water, so delicate while drinking or bathing, so like concrete when your body hits it at high speed and from a distance. And now, so obstinate when you tried to navigate through it. What he had to do was to swim to one shore or another, then take stock and see if he was really alive or if this was all some kind of dream after death and the place he was trying to navigate was the netherworld.
    THURSDAY, JUNE 3. 12:12 A.M.
    Marten read the illuminated face of his watch. Somehow he had reached the riverbank and crawled up it in the dark. How far he had come he didn’t know. His only reference