The Coptic Secret (18 page)

"Is me!" He was still gesturing for Lang to sit.

"B-But," Lang stammered, noting the cross had two cross members "You're ..."

"Greek church, one you call 'orthodox.' Is true! Who read ancient Greek better than another Greek, no? You are surprised I am here at center of Western church, no?"

Lang sat. "Well, yes."

Father Strentenoplis also sat. "Is age of ecumenicalism! No longer argue over number of angels dancing on head of a pin. Your pope need expert in ancient and Coptic Greek, my patriarch in Istanbul want expert on medieval German, read heretic Luther. Even swap, yes?"

Lang nodded, the man's enthusiasm contagious. "Sounds fair to me."

The priest gave the doorway a surreptitious glance before he reached under the desk and produced a small pouch and a stack of rolling papers. For an instant, Lang thought he was about to roll a joint. He was relieved to see he was
only preparing a cigarette. He rolled it with one hand, using the other to extend the tobacco and paper across the desk.

Lang shook his head.. "No thanks."

The father lit up, instantly dispelling Lang's long-held belief that his friend Jacob smoked the foulest tobacco in the world.

"You come see me about ancient Greek, yes?"

Lang reached inside his shirt, producing the sheaf of papers. He peeled off one of the two copies. "I was hoping you could translate."

The priest held the cigarette between his lips, squinting through the rising column of smoke. Lang wondered how many times he had set his beard ablaze. He held the papers flat with one hand, producing a pair of half-moon glasses with the other. He scanned the first couple of pages.

"I have not seen before. Is gospel I read about, the one where man get killed in England, no?"

"Sir Eon, yes. The Gospel of James."

The priest looked up from the papers, staring at Lang.

"I found where Sir Eon got that. The man who sold it to him made copies."

Father Strentenoplis nodded slowly as though answering a question only he had heard. He exhaled, sending smoke into his beard where tendrils wafted upward as though from a brushfire. "St. James first bishop of Jerusalem, first Eastern bishop. Is liked, esteemed, more by Eastern church than by Western."

Lang resisted the temptation to fan away the smell of the cigarette. "You can translate, read Egyptian with Greek letters?"

He was happy to see the butt finally stubbed out into a small ceramic dish. "Is Greek, no? Should have by tomorrow morning."

Lang left, certain he wouldn't get the smell of whatever tobacco the good father smoked out of his clothes for days.

If it was tobacco.

Lang was on his way to his room when a familiar buzz came from a pocket. Sara.

"Lang? The people at your condo are really getting annoyed."

Why not? His unit had been a hole in the side of the building and now the interior hall was filling up with unwanted kitchen appliances.

"You did what I suggested?"

"Of course. I placed the charges in dispute with the credit card company. Just like you said, that got Home Depot's attention. They called yesterday and promised to come get the stove and hood. And deliver your oven."

Why did he think the matter didn't end there? "And?"

"Now there's a stove, a hood and a bidet sitting in your hall."

IV.

The Vatican

Lang returned to his room the way he had come. After a sleepless night, the single beds looked inviting. But first...

He took out his BlackBerry and punched in Gurt's number. He was aware of Echelon, but what were the odds of this particular call being selected for a closer look or listen? Even less were the chances that whoever had killed Eon had a way to hack into that system.

He realized he was simply rationalizing a chance to speak to his son.

Manfred had spent the morning with his mother and grandfather, hiking in the nearby Schwartzwald, Black Forest. Lang smiled, recalling how much the Germans loved to tramp through the woods for no other reason than being there. He had often theorized two world wars might have started accidentally by what began as an overzealous stroll through the Ardennes.

Yes, he had had fun, but when was Daddy coming to take him back to Grumps?

Soon, Lang assured him.

With a child's insight, Manfred insisted on a specificity Lang was unable to give.

Gurt rescued Lang by taking the phone. "I also would like to know when you will be able to come."

Lang told her what had happened since their last conversation.

"You are without a clue," she observed.

"I should know something more when I get the translation back tomorrow," he said with an optimism he did not entirely feel.

The conversation ended with more promises to Manfred than Lang felt he could keep.

When he hit the end button, he sat morosely on the bed. When would he see his son again? Would Gurt legitimize the child by marrying him? With his home destroyed, where would they live? All of these seemed far more important than some ancient gospel the collators of the Bible had decided not to include. Lang wanted nothing more than a peaceful life with the family he had found so suddenly.

But there could be no peace as long as someone wanted him dead. Anger at these unknowns who had threatened not only him but his son began to grow, a rage made greater by lack of a specific target. The only real clue was the murders of Eon and Klaus, each with biblical overtones. Who but some fanatical religious group would take the pains to relate cold-blooded killings to the martyrdom of saints?

If only ...

He forgot everything he had been thinking of and stared at one of the two small chests of drawers against the far wall. The pulls were plain, round copper or brass disks.

But one was slightly larger than the others.

Intrigued, he sat on the floor, staring at what, moments before, had been a mundane, ordinary piece of metal. He opened the drawer. Each pull was secured to the inside by a bracket and a screw. He fumbled in his pocket for a moment before he came up with a dime. It fitted the screw head well enough to turn it.

Moments later, he was looking closely at the bit of metal in his hand, a fine mesh rather than solid like the others. Using a thumbnail, Lang pried up part of the tiny screen. He was not surprised to see a miniaturized listening device.

He instinctively glanced around the room. The thing could have been installed at any time but the battery life on something that small would only be a day or so. It was a safe guess the very unknowns against whom he had been raging had put it there. He resisted the impulse to grind the tiny thing under his heel. To do so would only alert its installers it had been found and encourage replacement with one he might not locate.

Instead, he carefully reinstalled it.

Then he began a meticulous sweep of the room. The phone was dis- and reassembled. The plates on all three electrical sockets were removed and replaced. Even the overhead light fixture received attention. There are only a limited number of places a bug can be placed and escape notice.

Satisfied, he took another longing look at the beds. No nap now. With doors without locks and his unidentified enemies aware of his location, sleep could be suicidal. He yawned. One of the little bureaus could be placed in front of the door and . .. and what? Without a weapon, it mattered little whether he heard a potential assassin or not.

Then he remembered something Francis had said just before he left.

Lang went back out, this time turning east toward St. Catherine's Gate. He crossed the area where he had seen the guards from his window and entered a building distinguishable from its neighbors only by a flat roof rather than the sloping red tiles common to the Vatican's buildings. Long wooden tables ran the length of a beamed room, reminiscent of a medieval banqueting hall. Clearly the mess. Across a hall was a smaller room, one stocked with the sort of general wares one would expect in an American drugstore, the commissary. Lang selected a baseball cap emblazoned with a helmet and what he guessed was a Swiss Guard logo. It was the smallest one he could find, one he hoped would fit a certain three-year-old head.

As he paid for his purchase, he asked the young, crew- cut man behind the counter, "Where's the armory?"

The kid didn't even look up from counting change. "Outside, turn left. Second door, first room on the right."

The armory was perhaps fifty feet long, its walls hung with halberds, swords and shields. An open gun rack ran down the middle containing enough rifles to start a small war.

As long as that war was fought in the first half of the last century. The rifles were bolt-action Mausers, the standard weapon of Germany's World War II infantryman.

A lone Schmeisser, automatic pistol, of the same vintage lay on top of the rack.

Lang stared stupidly at the far wall where a rack held both matchlock blunderbusses and flintlock muskets. The modern-day Swiss Guard must keep their own weapons instead of drawing them as needed from the armory. It made sense: The contemporary guard was unlikely to find itself opposing a siege by an enraged European monarch. These days, even royalty had to contend with budgetary constraints. A war of aggression would have to compete with national health care, an increasing dole and a parliament unlikely to reduce a litany of benefits to which voters had become accustomed. Rifles and heavier small arms weren't needed for the required duty, guarding the person of the pope rather than the bulk of the Papal States that had finally succumbed to the unification of Italy in the nineteenth century. Easily carried and concealed weapons would be all the modern guard required. The very sort of weapon Lang had planned on "borrowing."

Short of mugging one of the men in uniform, he clearly wasn't going to succeed.

With a sigh, he left the room and walked out into the increasing heat, which seemed to aggravate healing muscles already cramped by the long flight.

Outside the Vatican's walls, he stopped to buy a bottle of water. He all but emptied it before covering two blocks. He stuffed it into a back pocket. Since Rome was connected to a series of aquifers, even the little fountains, those consisting of no more than a pipe a foot or so above the street, provided sweet, cool and potable water.

The crowd around St. Peter's made it impossible to notice a possible tail.

Crossing the turgid green Tiber by the bridges over the Isola Tiberina, he could see the ruins of the massive Theater of Marcellus in the ghetto, the area in which medieval Rome's Jews were required to live and be locked in each night. There was much less foot traffic and he took his time, pretending to marvel at the old buildings. He even doubled back a couple of times without revealing anyone interested in his destination.

He hoped his memory held up because he knew his destination would be difficult to find. He turned left onto the Via del Portico, a convoluted route but one that would reveal anyone following him.

Navigating largely by the sight of the synagogue, one of the area's tallest buildings, he turned south, back toward the river. Every time he visited this part of Rome, he was impressed with the diminishing number of Jews. The narrow, winding streets, some of the oldest habitable quarters

and location had made the neighborhood desirable to the city's young and affluent. He could only hope the man he had come to see still lived at the same address. He would be well past ninety by now.

He turned north on the broad Lungotevere dei Cenci and walked two blocks along the river before stopping to admire an apartment building that had maintained its ancient facade while the interior had been renovated. Still nobody paid him attention. Two quick steps carried him into a narrow alley. At the end stood a three-story structure he remembered from years ago.

Lang was relieved to see the name still beside the list of doorbells, faded but legible:
benscare.
Lang pushed the button and waited. He tried again with the same result.

He was about to make one more attempt when a voice crackled from the speaker. The words were unintelligible, but the tone indicated a question.

"Viktor, it's Lang Reilly," he said, his mouth close to the speaker to avoid having to shout. "You and I did business years ago."

There was a heavy metallic thump as a bolt slid back and Lang stepped inside. The marble foyer was only large enough to contain doors to the two lower apartments and a staircase. There was no elevator. Renovation had not reached this far yet.

Leaning heavily on the stair rail to take as much weight as possible off protesting muscles and joints, Lang climbed to the top, the third floor, and knocked on a worn wooden door.

The door swung open and Lang was looking at an elfin little man whose long white hair reached below his slumped shoulders. Inside, klieg lights, lamps, reflective umbrellas, tripods and camera gear occupied every horizontal surface.

The man was still working, although he had to be well into his nineties. Even more amazing than handheld worldwide communication.

Lang knew Viktor Benscare had lived and worked as a professional photographer in this same apartment since 1922, the same year a certain lantern-jawed Fascist named Benito Mussolini had come to power. During the war years, Viktor had developed a profitable sideline: forgery. He had created passports for partisans as well as for Jews seeking to escape deportation to the death camps while the nearby Vatican inexplicably had not even murmured a protest. Due to the Italians' lack of fervor in enforcing their German comrades' racial edicts, his semicelebrity status as Rome's most famous portrait photographer, a non-Semitic name and, no doubt, well-placed bribes allowing him to tinker with birth records, Viktor had survived the Holocaust. With the fall of the Axis powers, his sideline boomed. He provided identities for those displaced persons who had lost theirs and for those who could not afford to retain their own in view of the Allied war crimes tribunals. When Europe settled down to its usual semipeaceful bickering, he had worked for the Camorra, the Neopolitan crime families, a loosely knit organization far exceeding in size, power and wealth its Sicilian counterpart.