The Coptic Secret (3 page)

But that faint wish had evaporated like smoke the minute the telephone clattered.

A robbery and kidnapping?

Two casualties, one a guard employed by the museum and the other one of the kidnappers? He was less than surprised to learn the latter had died by Reilly's hand. And Sir Eon Weatherston-Wilby was apparently kidnapped. One of the country's best-known philanthropists.

The media would be on this like another scandal at Buckingham Palace. The difference was that Scotland Yard didn't get pressure when one of the royals acted like Euro- trash.

The inspector felt a migraine coming on, that headache that only Langford Reilly seemed to precipitate.

He got up with a resigned sigh and went to the hall closet. Through the Sheetrock, he could hear the Wilsons arguing again on their side of the semidetached.

"Going out, dear?" Shandon, his wife, asked from the kitchen. "Will you be long?"

"I doubt I'll be any shorter," he replied glumly, the hoary joke they shared.

His mood was not improved when he had to wait a good quarter hour for Patel, his immediate assistant and driver, to pull to the curb. As usual, the man had filled the small BMW with the smell of curry. Nor did Fitzwilliam's disposition improve when the dark face broke into its perpetual grin as though the man enjoyed having his evenings interrupted.

"The British Museum, sah?"

Fitzwilliam swallowed a retort, realizing it would be lost on Patel. "Yes, yes. The museum."

Two blocks of Great Russell Street and Montague Place were blocked off with yellow crime scene tape as was all of Russell Square. Floodlights illuminated the small park with a harsh glare, the edges of which blended into the blue and red flashes of police cars. If anyone in Bloomsbury didn't already know a crime had been committed, they had to be blind and deaf.

Inside, the uniforms had prevented anyone from leaving, a splendid case of securing the barn door long after the horse's departure. Two policemen were seated at a small table in the great court, taking names and addresses of possible witnesses whose interviews would consume days.

"Where's Mr. Reilly?" Fitzwilliam asked one of the constables at the door.

The man pointed, "Right over there, sir."

Fitzwilliam had never seen the man in person before but recognized him from his image on the cameras at Heathrow as well as at least one wanted poster from a foreign country. He watched as a short, redheaded woman in a police uniform took down whatever was being said.

The American was not as tall as the inspector had imagined, shy of two meters. Dark hair with dove wings of silver brushed over the ears. His tuxedo had obviously been tailored; it fit him perfectly. He seemed intent on what he was saying, completely unruffled by killing a man. With a spear, if Fitzwilliam's information was correct.

The man next to him was the Jewish barrister, Annulewitz, pipe in his mouth despite the
no smoking
signs. Shorter, balding and going to fat. Fitzwilliam had gotten the impression the relationship between the two exceeded a professional one. It had been outside Annulewitz's flat that Reilly had once killed two anonymous thugs, although the fact was never proved. A couple of years later, Reilly had escaped from Annulewitz's law office at the Temple Bar leaving Fitzwillam's men looking foolish indeed.

Lang was just finishing his third recitation of the evening's events when a man in a worn tweed jacket wandered over, the only man he could see without either a tux or a police uniform.

"Inspector Dylan Fitzwilliam," the stranger introduced himself.

Lang extended a hand. "Lang Reilly."

The inspector glanced at the extended hand as though it might explode and stuck his own into his jacket pockets. "I'd appreciate you walking me through what happened."

The man's tone implied he was giving an order, not asking a favor.

"Sure." Lang pointed. "The table where those two police officers are taking names was in the room between here and the Reading Room. Eon was standing—"

"You mean Sir Eon Weatherston-Wilby."

What was the thing the Brits had about titles? Maybe it was the only part of their former nobility that was still noble rather than ammunition for the tabloids.

Lang finished his narrative.

"Perhaps you would be so kind as to take me to room four, the Egyptian exhibit."

Again, more of an order than a request.

A photographer was finishing up taking pictures of a chalk outline on the floor. A janitorial employee, mop in one hand, bucket in another, was waiting to remove what was now a congealed black puddle of blood. The wreckage of the chariot had already been removed, presumably to wherever the museum did restorations.

Fitzwilliam rested an elbow in the palm of one hand while he rubbed his chin thoughtfully with the other. "You attacked an armed man with only a spear?"

"I didn't have a lot of options."

"Why didn't you wait for the police like everyone else?"

Lang detected what could be a tone of accusation. "Because I didn't want them to get away with Eon. Sir Eon."

"Just what made you think they were going to take him farther than this building?"

Lang watched the photographer pack up his equipment. "Why would they take him from where he was otherwise?"

"But they were armed. What did you think you could do?"

Lang was getting irritated at what seemed pointless interrogation. "Ask the man your folks just peeled off the floor there."

Fitzwilliam caught the edge in the reply and changed the subject as well as location. "Let's take a look at the loading door, shall we?"

The door was wide-open, revealing several officers searching the street as well as the square.

"These doors aren't the kind that open from the inside when locked," Fitzwilliam observed.

Having noticed that previously, Lang said nothing.

"That would indicate they were left unlocked, quite likely intentionally."

Lang still said nothing.

Fitzwilliam was scratching his chin again. "What do you make of that, Mr. Reilly?"

"Too bad you can't ask the guard they shot."

The inspector's hands dropped to his side. "Meaning?"

"Meaning someone had to let them in. Killing that someone is the one sure way to make sure nobody knows who they are."

Fitzwilliam nodded slowly. This American might cause trouble, but he didn't miss much, either. "I don't suppose you have a thought as to the identity of the dead man?"

Involuntarily, Lang's hand slid into his pocket, touching the crumpled piece of paper, the half of the boarding pass if that was really what it was. He instantly decided not to mention it. Information was the capital of his former profession with the agency: once spent it became useless.

"Not a clue."

III.

New Mermaid
Inn

High Street

Rye

East Sussex

The Next Morning

Jenny Fasting never understood why someone as wealthy as Langford Reilly would choose to stay in a hotel as old as this one. The ceilings were low, the floors uneven, the doorways crooked and the mullioned windows mostly opaque. She had asked him once and he had replied that if the place had been good enough for Elizabeth Tudor, it was good enough for him. Of course, it had been a bit newer when Good Queen Bess had paid a visit to Rye to inquire about an inconsistent source of fish. That was before the river's mouth had silted up, ending Rye's place as a major harbor and fishing center. The inn had been almost new when the Queen visited, having replaced the former Mermaid Inn after the French had staged a surprise raid and burned a good part of the town as well as the hotel. Jenny was fairly certain Elizabeth I had never actually stayed here, though.

That was the thing about the Yanks: they worshiped the old, even old buildings in advanced states of dilapidation. Yanks. A word she understood her boss, Lang Reilly, did not appreciate for reasons that had to do with a dispute over there in America more than a hundred years ago. Something about a War of Northern Aggression. Whatever that was.

Another thing about the Yanks, er, Americans: they were always in a hurry. That was why she had been awakened after midnight last night by a call from London. Mr. Reilly wanted her to meet him in the small laboratory facility his foundation had set up in Rye to serve the institution's needs in the British Isles. Cheaper than London with considerably less traffic. In fact, Rye's main street was still cobblestoned with half-timbered houses just as though the Queen might return.

If he had asked her to meet him anywhere other than the laboratory, she might have been able to fantasize some sort of romantic liaison. Although Mr. Reilly had never been anything more than polite at both the meetings she had with him, he was, after all, single and quite good-looking. And rich. Not the type to show any interest in a drab lab tech like Jenny.

She ran her fingers nervously through limp hair the color of dead grass. One of these days she would replace the thick glasses with that new eye surgery. In the meantime, she would continue to look like just what she was: a lab boffin. A
single
lab boffin.

And there was nothing romantic about being called out of bed to put some stub of paper under an electronic microscope, read it and make a legible copy by breakfast. That was hardly her job. She dealt with the arcana of chemical biology. But Mr. Reilly
was
the boss and if he wanted a jillion pounds sterling worth of gadgetry used to examine a piece of paper, so be it. An airline boarding pass, at that. Seemed he could simply call the airline if he had somehow managed to damage his bleeding boarding pass.

But he was the boss.

That was why she was sitting in the dining room of the New Mermaid, sipping tea that tasted like it had been brewed sometime in the distant past, waiting for Lang Reilly.

He appeared on the dot of 8:00, disgustingly wide-awake. He slid into the seat across the table from her, wished her a good morning and ordered kippers and eggs from the innkeeper.

Jenny wondered if anyone, Lang Reilly included, really took pleasure in staring eye to eye with a smoked herring first thing in the morning. Although the dish was as English as afternoon tea, the sight and smell of a dead fish at breakfast was, well, disgusting. Why couldn't he simply have bangers and mash like a working-class sod? Even so, she could not tear her sight away as he deftly stripped the backbone and its comblike rack from the rest of the fish.

"So, what did you find out?" he asked.

Although she knew exactly what she had found, she dug in her purse and extracted an enlarged copy. "Aegean Air flight 162, seat 24-B. Either the twenty-third or twenty- fifth of last month. The paper was too badly worn to be sure."

He reached for the paper. "Any idea from where to where?"

She shook her head. "I couldn't get a real soul at Aegean Air this early, only serial recordings, but I'll be happy
to..."

If Jenny had her way, the hottest place in hell would be reserved for whoever invented voice mail and those infuriating mechanical queries that only lead to another.

He smiled as he sectioned a piece of fish. "No need. You've done your job and thanks. You'll find a little gift in your next paycheck."

"Oh, Mr Reilly," she protested, "you don't have
to ..."

She stopped in midsentence. The man at the next table was clearly listening although he was using a copy of the day's
Times
as a prop to conceal his interest. What Jenny was saying sounded
like ...
sounded like something quite different than an employer speaking to an employee. She felt herself flush at what the eavesdropper must be thinking.

Lang silenced her with a hand. "Don't deprive an old man of his pleasures."

Pleasures? Old man? She'd give anything
to...
The thought made her blush even more.

"Thank you," she managed.

Fifteen minutes later in his room, Lang stared without comprehension at the copy Jenny had given him. Through long mastery of the corporate telephone maze, he had reached a living, breathing person at Aegean Air. The flight in question had been an A (Airbus) 320-200 from Rhodes to Athens. No, privacy policy forbade disclosing the name of the passenger occupying that specific seat.

A quick call to the States produced a sleepy, "Yeah...?"

"Jimmy?" Lang asked.

"You're calling at fucking two o'clock in the mornin' and you're not sure you have the right person?"

If personality were his only asset, Jimmy Edge would be unemployable. Fortunately, Jimmy was a geek without peer. Unfortunately, his skills were far more useful on the wrong side of the law. Hacking into and altering bank records in his favor had proved far more lucrative than programming corporate computers. Lang had successfully negotiated a plea deal on Jimmy's behalf by which the hacker had provided a complete list of his victims in exchange for probation. The United States attorney had howled like a wounded animal at the court's leniency, but, as one of the larger financial institutions admitted, without Jimmy's help there was little chance their electronic records could be straightened out for years.