The Hadrian Memorandum Read Free Page A

was the sound of rushing water not far away. For a long moment he lay there doing little more than breathing. Then slowly, deliberately, he moved his right arm and then his left. Then one leg and then the other. Each move had hurt, but as far as he could tell nothing was broken. Now he took stock of the rest. There was a long raw scrape on his right leg that ran from just below his knee to his ankle. His left elbow and forearm were raw as well, the same as his forehead at the hairline. His lightweight tropical shirt and trousers were both torn but serviceable; his travel pouch that held his passport and small travel wallet around his neck was still there. His hiking boots, while soaked through, were still on his feet.
    He sat up and listened, wondering if the soldiers had been able to follow him. If they were out there now in the dark, closing in through the thick growth of the jungle that lined the riverbank. He heard nothing but the distant chatter of a night bird. Again he looked up through the trees. As before, he saw starlit sky. Then the thought came that he had no idea where he was or which way the river flowed, east or west, north or south.
    Bioko, he knew, was an island in the Gulf of Guinea. That meant that whatever waterway he had been swept along would eventually run into another, larger channel that would lead to another and then to the sea itself. If he could follow it and reach the shore he might find a village that had a boat he could hire that would take him north to the capital city of Malabo and the Hotel Malabo, where he’d left his things and where he might learn the fate of Father Willy, and then, as quickly as possible, get on a flight back to Europe.
    Marten pushed himself to his feet and walked twenty or so yards back to the river’s edge. Judging the direction of the current, he moved off in the dark, hugging the riverbank and following it toward what he hoped would be the sea.

4
    SIMCO HEADQUARTERS. MALABO. 12:23 A.M.
    The always punctual Conor White sat in the small darkened office near the front of the large motor home that served as both his temporary company headquarters and, in the rear, his private living area. His computer screen aglow in front of him, he waited for twelve twenty-five, the time his party in Virginia would be ready to receive the secure e-mail he was about to send.
    12:24 A.M.
    White tapped his fingers in anticipation. They’d lost power earlier in the evening because of the storm that had twisted over the island, coming on land in the south and then retreating back to sea only to slam into the north several hours later. Immediately the SimCo compound’s backup generator had kicked in. Then the power had come back on and the generator had been shut down. None of this was new to Conor White, president and CEO of SimCo, the man in charge of the private security company’s four-hundred-man armed force in Equatorial Guinea and its seventy-man contingent in Iraq. At forty-five, the powerfully built, six-foot-four White, with his chiseled good looks and dark razor-cut hair, could still be a model for the modern professional mercenary soldier. A former col o nel in the British army’s SAS—the Special Air Service Regiment—he’d formed his first private military security firm, Argosy International, eight years earlier in the Netherlands, selling it as a “military security company” that provided what he referred to as “operational support to legitimate governments and companies around the world.” Since then he’d built Argosy into a thousand-employee firm with satellite bases in five different countries.
    Then, a little more than a year earlier, at the urging of Josiah Wirth, chairman and chief executive of the Texas-based oil and energy company AG Striker, and Loyal Truex, former U.S. Army Ranger and founder and head of Hadrian Worldwide Protective Services Company, the world’s largest private military or ga ni za tion, he’d abruptly sold his interest in Argosy.