The Coptic Secret (15 page)

That was, of course, one of any number of places she and her son were not going tonight.

The flight to the City of Light was scheduled to push back from the gate in seventeen more minutes. She had deliberately chosen Atlanta's leading airline, knowing its storied inability to make an on-time international departure. She supposed that, being a company based in the languid South, posted arrival and departure times were informational only; that is, the plane would definitely not depart or arrive
before
the time given. How long thereafter was slightly less predictable than the stock market, future interest rates or the next professional athlete to be accused of steroid use. Experience had taught her that taking an international flight on this airline to connect with a foreign carrier's schedule was a guarantee of time to be spent in unplanned places.

But she was not connecting and what she had in mind would work only with a dominant if inefficient airline.

Between scratchy announcements of varied reasons the Paris flight would be predictably delayed, she attempted to keep a wide-eyed Manfred entertained. Or at least from becoming a nuisance to passengers already irritated by the airline's endless supply of excuses. Walks up and down the concourse or following the lights of planes until they disappeared into the night sky worked for the moment. Whenever she left the gate area, her watcher moved to a position where he could see. Several times he muttered into a cell phone.

She surmised she was not the person her minder's superiors were really interested in. They wanted Lang. She was merely someone who might be going to meet him and therefore worth keeping under observation in case Lang slipped his tether. Perhaps they didn't actually know where he was, a fact she doubted. For all she knew, whatever organization the news reader was working for had already hacked into the airline's reservation system. If so, no wonder they had a man to see where she was going after periodic and less-than-subtle tails for the last few days, tails she had regularly evaded. She booked the flight under her own name. The agency's paranoia as to possible adverse publicity regarding unnecessary pseudonymous travel required it when not on agency business.

Excuses finally exhausted, first-class boarding for the Paris flight was announced. Holding Manfred's hand in one of hers, Gurt rolled her suitcase on board with the other. As anticipated, the flight attendant barely glanced at the two boarding passes before both Gurt and her son were ensconced in large, comfortable seats with leg room large enough for an normal adult. It only took a few minutes before a man stood in the aisle, looking from Gurt to his boarding pass and back again.

"You sure you're in the right seat?" he asked, his tone indicating the answer he expected.

Gurt took a long look at the slip she held in her hand. "Flight one seventeen, two A and B."

By this time the flight attendant had arrived. "Wrong flight, honey. This one goes to Paris."

Gurt stood, feigning both surprise and embarrassment. "I am so sorry." She bent over to unbuckle Manfred's seat belt before retrieving her bag from the overhead compartment. "I hope I have not caused .. ."

The displaced passenger's eyes were fixed on the place the top button of her blouse was fastened. "No trouble at all. Hope you make your flight."

Gurt took her time, standing aside as the other passengers trooped aboard like cattle into a pen. When the last one was through the door, she led Manfred up the passageway to the gate area. As she had expected, the man with the newspaper was gone.

She calmly walked down the concourse to the flight she had planned to take all along. She had also planned on the fact its departure would be delayed.

There was something to be said for predictability as a substitute for punctuality.

VIII.

Prague

Lang felt weakness in his knees as he struggled to gasp air through the stranglehold. The knife's blade was inexorably moving toward his throat. He was smaller than his opponent to begin with; his partially healed injuries had tipped the scales even further.

He leaned backward.

The man behind him reflexively took a step forward, the better to balance dead weight.

That was when Lang brought the heel of his shoe smashing into the arch of the other man's foot.

Metatarsal bones crunched like dry twigs.

Simultaneous with a yelp of pain, the grip around Lang's throat relaxed slightly and he went totally limp. The sudden gravitational pull against the loosened grasp dropped Lang to the floor like a sack of concrete.

Fighting the urge to stop long enough to fill his lungs, Lang rolled across the planks and the worn carpet toward where he had last seen the Browning when it was knocked from his hand.

A bellow of rage made him glance backward. Baldy, his ruined nose covered in a dirty bandage, glared through a pig's bloodshot eyes. He was unable to put weight on his crushed foot. He was padding across the floor on his knees, the switchblade extended.

He swiped at Lang, the blade glittering like a streaking comet in the window's light. As Lang jerked back, before Baldy could draw back again, Lang was on his feet, delivering the hardest kick he could muster to the side of his enemy's head.

He may as well have used a pillow. Baldy wagged that shiny, shaved head like a boxer shaking off a hard right cross and came on, muttering something Lang was happy he could not understand. The intent was clear enough.

Lang gave ground, his eyes searching for his missing weapon, until he felt the wall at his back. His hand touched the top of a chair. Baldy made no effort to dodge as Lang raised it above his own head to bring it crashing down on Baldy's.

Unlike the brittle furniture of cinema, the wood did not shatter or even crack. It did, however, lay Baldy out flat for about a two count before he used a table to struggle to his one good foot and came on, dragging his other.

Talk about hardheaded determination.

Lang slid along the wall as Baldy continued, the knife making small circles in the air. Lang stopped. He waited until his assailant was almost within striking range. Then, leaning back on his left leg, he swung his right in an arc, the foot-sweep common to judo, jujitsu and any other number of martial arts. His foot knocked Baldy's out from under him.

The man crashed like a felled oak, the hand not holding the knife swiping at Klaus's wheelchair as though for support. The wheelchair did, in fact, shatter like furniture in the barroom fight scene of a B-movie Western.

The old man's body was dumped unceremoniously on the floor like a discarded doll.

Lang had no time to observe the niceties. His seemingly invincible opponent was struggling to his feet once more. He considered a retreat to the kitchen in hopes of finding a knife of his own, but Baldy was between him and the doorway. From its location, Lang guessed the only other exit led into Klaus's bedroom. Baldy could simply wait in the hallway and dispose of Lang at his leisure.

The he saw it: the Browning's butt half hidden under the folds of a carpet kicked over in the present struggle.

Baldy saw it, too, and he was closer.

But with his injured foot, he was also slower.

Lang was going to bet his life on it.

Reaching behind him, Lang picked a book from the table and threw it as hard as he could at the right side of Baldy's head. There was nothing wrong with the man's reflexes. He ducked to his left; away from the pistol. Lang dove for it, a swimmer's racing dive onto a hardwood floor.

The impact knocked the breath out of him and sent colored spots spinning in front of his eyes as partially healed bones and muscles protested the impact.

Gun
in both hands, Lang rolled onto his back just as Baldy leapt at him, knife outstretched.

The Browning jumped in Lang's hands and he forced its muzzle down for a second shot.

He saw the brass shells spin through the air, reflecting the light; he smelled burned gunpowder. But he never recalled hearing the shots, some sort of reaction of the mind to block out some sensations while magnifying others.

He also saw Baldy, sitting splay-legged on the floor. The knife was beside him but the man was intently inspecting two growing red Rorschach blots on his chest that could be seen even against the black of his T-shirt. Shakily, he got to his feet, glaring at Lang with unmistakable hatred. He said something Lang guessed was in Czech, took a half step and did a face-plant on the floor.

Lang circled warily. He fully expected the man to get up and come at him again.

Pressing the gun's muzzle against the shiny scalp, Lang listened for breath for a moment before feeling for the carotid artery. There was no pulse.

Lang felt nausea rising in his throat. He could not ignore the irony: In all the years he had spent with the agency, he trained in the art of killing but never had. Since then, he had been forced to take perhaps a half dozen lives in defense of his own, Justifiable or not, he would never get used to it.

Swallowing pure bile, he hastily looked around the room. The sound of the struggle and the gunshots surely had caused someone to call the police. It was definitely time to leave. He started for the door when two things stopped him in his tracks.

Among the wreckage of Klaus's wheelchair was a purse, the old-fashioned cloth kind that snapped shut, the sort of thing in which a woman might keep in her handbag with her change in it. Lang did not recall seeing it; but, then, he hadn't had a lot of time to look around. Either way, it was empty.

There was another item, one he was sure had not been there before: a sheaf of papers in one of the shattered arms of the wheelchair. The arm was hollow. A quick inspection showed a series of characters Lang recognized as Greek. The old fox had likely had the copy of the Book of James with him last night, concealed all along, no doubt planning to make more.

Lang took one last gaze around before he left the room to the growing sound of sirens. He stepped over Baldy's body. Distasteful or not, Lang was thankful a couple of 9mm slugs finally stopped him.

He was fresh out of sharpened wooden stakes.

Chapter Four

I.

The Rectory

Immaculate Conception Catholic Church

48 Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive

Atlanta, Georgia

8:34
p.m
., Two Days Later

Lang waited until Francis's housekeeper removed the last of the dinner dishes. An expectant Grumps followed her into the kitchen.

"You sure you won't have any trouble with the diocese, letting us, me and the dog, stay here?"

Francis was halfway to a sideboard and the bottle of single malt scotch it contained. "I'm sure the bishop would agree it is better to have the apostate where the church can keep an eye on them. If we had watched Luther a little more closely, it would be a better world." "Only if you happened to be a papist." Francis snorted and lifted the bottle to show the label to Lang. "Precisely."

Lang followed the priest and the bottle into a small study. Books lined the three windowless walls. "I'll have to admit, this is one of the last places anyone would look for me."

Francis was tinkling ice cubes from a silver bucket into glasses. "No argument there." He handed one of the tumblers to Lang. "And you are sure someone is after you? This isn't a manifestation of paranoia produced by a troubled mind?"

Lang sank into a leather club chair. "Want to go down to my country place and count the bullet holes? And you should see the burned hole in the sky that was my condo."

Francis sat and took a sip, shaking his head. "In the vulgate, your ass is always in one crack or another. I gather that's why Gurt left?"

Lang nodded. "Pretty much. Neither of us want to take chances with Manfred."

Francis thought this over a moment. In the years of his close friendship with Lang, he had learned Lang would tell him all he wanted known in his own time. "From what you said before supper, it has something to do with scripture or one of the apostles."

"I think so. Specifically, James. Was he the brother of Jesus?"

The priest stared into his drink for a moment before rising to pull a well-worn Bible from the shelves. "That's been the subject of debate. Matthew 13:53-56 says"—he opened the book—"after the young Jesus astonished the various priests at the synagogue, it was asked, Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is this not the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us?' Mark has almost the identical language at 6:6." He thumbed the pages. "Plus, Luke 2:7 speaks of Jesus as Mary's firstborn son, an implication she had others later. In Galatians 1:19, Paul tells us, when he traveled to Jerusalem, he 'saw none of the apostles except James, the Lord's brother.'"

Lang took a drink. "I understand that poses a problem to you bead slingers, both from the point of view of having the siblings of the Son of God unaccounted for and the doctrine of the continuing virginity of Mary. I also understand the church contends all those siblings were from a previous marriage of Joseph."