The Coptic Secret (36 page)

He was also a good enough friend to know when Lang wasn't being entirely candid. "Well?"

Lang took a healthy swig from his glass as though that would anesthetize his discomfort. "The Gospel of James, the Nag Hammadi book I mentioned ..."

Francis ignored the growing length of his cigar ash, letting it finally fall onto the floor. "And?"

"It states that Christ reappeared to the apostles, including James, for the purpose of removing Peter as the leader of the early church. Peter got angry and killed James."

"Like the fresco we saw at the Vatican that day," Francis said.

Lang was thankful the priest was so calm about something that contravened everything he had been taught.

"So, why does that mean people would want to harm our child?" Gurt asked.

Francis shook his head slowly, wearied by the things some do in the name of faith. "Peter was the rock upon which Christ founded his church. To make him into not only a petty political squabbler but a murderer ... well, it would certainly rewrite the days of early Christianity as we know it, cast doubt on the validity of other gospels. It would be like ... like discovering George Washington was actually in the pay of the British. Peter, his view of what the church should be, formed the very basis of the church we have today. The church, the papacy, the sacraments, a great deal of the ritual, all of it. There are some in the church, some of the ultraconservatives, who would deny there is any truth whatsoever to your book. And some who would do anything to suppress it."

"Including killing someone?" Lang asked.

"We're not proud of it, but that's what the Inquisition was all about: crushing heresy by killing heretics. Anyone who thinks that mentality doesn't still exist among some ultrareactionaries is kidding themselves." Francis gave a sad little smile. "You already have your answer. Find those who feel that violently about it and you have your assassins."

"Makes sense," Lang mused aloud. "Leaving clues at murder scenes that related to the martyrdom of various saints. Would have to be religious zealots. Problem is, who?" He turned to Francis. "And you?"

Francis gave a deep sigh. "Faith is not knowledge; it is belief in what we cannot know. What I believe is that Our Lord walked this earth and I intend to follow him, no matter who did so first, Peter or James. On an intellectual level, I know that
all
gospels were written after the Crucifixion, the closest perhaps seventy years later. There are discrepancies as there would be in any history after the fact. One gospel has Jesus born in a barn, another in a house and a third and fourth don't mention the birth at all. Who is to say your Nag Hammadi book is correct and Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are wrong?"

"But the fresco ... ?"

Francis shrugged. "The Vatican, like all of Rome, is full of fanciful art as we discussed about the Final Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. The imagination of some Renaissance artist, no matter how talented, is nothing more than that, imagination. Don't worry about my faith, my good friend; worry about who is trying to kill you."

VIII.

Atlanta Headquarters

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Richard Russell Federal

Building The Next Day

Lang and Gurt were at a table in a windowless conference room. Manfred sat quietly beside her, crayon in his fist as he obliterated the pictures in his coloring book in a maze of hues that were not greatly different from the contemporary art hanging in the building's lobby. She was unwilling to let him out of her sight and Lang had realized early the futility of trying to persuade her otherwise.

The incident at Charlie Brown yesterday involved an attempted kidnapping, clearly the turf of the federal government. The fact that an aircraft, an instrument of interstate, if not international, commerce was involved only strengthened their territorial claims. The local cops could do little but complain that a homicide, a state offense, had occurred. For the moment at least, the investigation would be conducted by the FBI, not the Atlanta police.

Before arrival in the US, the Lear had filed an international flight plan originating from Ciampino, Rome's other airport, used by private and charter aircraft. It had made two intermediate fueling stops. The registration had led to a dead end, a company based in the Chanel Islands where corporate secrecy was a major export.

In short, the FBI, so far, knew less that Lang and Gurt.

The matter would be handled in a professional, not an Inspector Clouseau-type, manner.

Lang got up and walked over to the window, taking in Atlanta's railroad gulch, a scar of empty space that had once been the locale of two rail terminals. The stations and tracks were long gone, leaving a spaghetti bowl of overpasses above kudzu-lined parking lots. At the far end, the Georgia Dome's canvas roof rose like a poisonous mushroom. If view were any criterion, the bureau did not rank high in the federal pecking order.

He turned as the door behind him opened and a chubby-faced young man entered with slender file under one arm.

He plopped his burden down on the table and extended a hand. "Special Agent Kurt Widner. I want to thank both of you for coming down here today."

He sat, opening his file. "Mr. Reilly, would you mind returning to the reception area?"

Lang would have been surprised if he had not been asked to retire. Basic interrogation procedure required each witness to be interviewed out of the hearing of another. In this case, the practice was reduced to form over function. He and Gurt had had plenty of time to decide what would and would not be said. Lang retraced his steps down a short corridor to the receptionist's area, a window- less room as bleak as the conference room. The picture of the president and the copy of the Constitution ubiquitous to federal offices were the only decorations. The room contained but two chairs separated by a small table of cheap laminate. Both chairs were occupied. The bureau was unusually popular this morning.

Lang looked around, uncertain of what to do.

"I can borrow a chair from the conference room," chirped the receptionist from behind her sliding plastic window.

Lang turned and saw a smiling black woman. "Thanks. If you'll unlock the door, I'll save you the trouble. I know the way."

There was a buzz as the dead bolt slid back and Lang reentered the hall he had just left. The receptionist was a new hire, he guessed. The few previous visits he had made here had been characterized by security measures far beyond what was necessary to protect whatever investigations were under way. Or Fort Knox. Locks on every door, every door locked, every visitor thoroughly vetted, scanned and escorted. The bureau either took itself very seriously or suffered mass paranoia. Or both.

One door was ajar. Not surprisingly, it bore the name of Special Agent Kurt Widner. He had not shut and locked his office, intending to go between here and the conference room as he checked facts on his computer while interviewing Gurt and Lang. A metal government-issue desk occupied most of the space, crowding a desk chair on one side and a small metal chair with a shiny vinyl seat on the other. There was hardly room for the squat iron safe in the far corner.

A small hinged frame contained picturers of an attractive woman and a child of undeterminable sex. Lang smiled. Ever since the Hoover days, the bureau had been big on just this sort of homey touch. So great had been the pressure on agents to enjoy familial bliss that Lang had heard of single or divorced agents who displayed pictures of strangers or other people's kids rather than risk the director's disfavor. Strange, considering Hoover himself had never married.

The photos shared the desktop with a computer and several files. Lang hefted the chair with the vinyl seat and was about to leave when his eye caught a label on one of the folders.

dea co-op
. And in smaller letters:
lamar co. ga.

Still holding the chair, Lang backed into the hall and looked both ways. Empty. He could get in big trouble, both with the fibbies and the state bar, for what he was about to do. The upside was that he was about to have some real fun.

He stepped back into the office, shut the door and began to skim the file, an outline of a joint investigation between the Drug Enforcement Agency in middle Georgia and the Atlanta FBI. Mere coincidence he had found this? No, not really. Bringing in agents both from Atlanta and a different branch of law enforcement whose faces would be unknown in Lamar County made sense. If there was luck involved, it was that Special Agent Widner had gotten careless. Lang would have liked to have taken notes, but there simply wasn't time. At some point, Agent Widner was going to come back here or the receptionist would come looking for him. He scanned the file a second time, making sure of the relevant details.

On the way back from the federal building, Gurt and Lang discussed their separate interviews. From the questions asked, it seemed clear the feds were clueless as to the identity of the would-be kidnappers. Lang gathered that, whoever they were, they were being less than cooperative when questioned. But they were in custody and would be indefinitely, hopefully long enough for Lang to discover who had sent them before they tried again.

In the meantime, Lang had to find the would-be assassins. Trying to kill him was real personal. Attempting to harm his new family was even more so.

But first, Lang would be busy with another matter.

IX.

United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia

Macon, Georgia

A Week Later

The drive to Macon had seemed endless even though only eighty miles of interstate separated it from Atlanta, where Lang and Grumps had become indefinite guests at Francis's rectory. No one followed Lang on a few aimless excursions from the interstate. Before leaving, he had verified his still-unknown enemies were still in the custody of the feds in Atlanta. Whoever they were, they apparently did not have endless reinforcements.

Surprisingly, Gurt had offered little argument when a European vacation-bound friend of Lang's had offered the use of a cottage on the grounds of the High Hampton Inn in the mountains near Cashiers, North Carolina. She would scrupulously avoid the use of credit cards, ATMs or anything else that might leave a record of her presence there. Happily, other than homemade quilts, tacky handicrafts and overpriced junk that every roadside stand proclaimed to be "genuine mountain antiques," there was nothing to buy. The accommodations were rustic at best, the hotel's food wholesome if unappetizing. But the view was magnificent, the climate temperate as compared to Atlanta from June until September. Best of all, a number of young mothers and their broods summered there while their husbands labored during the week in Charlotte, Atlanta, Birmingham or a dozen other southeastern cities. Manfred had more playmates than he ever had and Gurt could watch for strangers who would stand out like a missing plank in a picket fence.

Francis was still trying his Vatican contacts to learn more than the names of the men in the Lear jet but so far without success. Lang got the impression the delay was more attributable to red tape than stonewalling. Not even the Holy Father was immune to bureaucracy and this one had had two millennia to become entrenched, immovable and unhelpful.

Lang eased the Porsche into a parking lot, thankful he had mended enough to manage the car's manual transmission. His two-block stroll to the courthouse reminded him he had also healed enough to resume his regularly scheduled workouts.

Sam "Dusty" Roads, the youthful United States attorney, was already in the courtroom, accompanied by an older man whom Lang recognized as a senior US attorney from the northern division. His name eluded memory's grasp. Dusty's greeting was decidedly less enthusiastic than his previous one.

"What the hell are you trying to do, Reilly?"

Lang put his slim attaché case down on counsel table and smiled. "And a good morning to you, too. What I'm trying to do is to have my client acquitted."

"What you're going to do is get yourself sanctioned," the older man growled. "Subpoenaing a federal agent, demanding sensitive FBI files ... In case you didn't know, the bureau isn't involved in this case. The DEA is."

The smile never left Lang's face. His experience was that the greater the government bluster, the better chance he was on track. And a senior US attorney hadn't driven down here for the ride. "Thanks for enlightening me."

"You may think this is some kind of a joke, Reilly, but—"

He was interrupted by the door opening. All three men turned to see Larry Henderson timidly peering into the courtroom like a mouse trying to decide if it was safe to leave its hole.

Lang motioned. "C'mon in, Larry. Us lawyers were just exchanging pleasantries."

Freed of leg irons since he was out of jail on bond, Larry nonetheless traversed the room with uncertain steps and sat next to Lang. He wore a suit with a tie narrow enough to serve as a shoestring, something Lang guessed had belonged to his father. Before the two could exchange greetings, the marshal appeared to herald Judge Carver's ascension to the bench. The judge nodded a no-nonsense "good morning," sat and began to thumb through the case file while the court reporter wound paper into her machine.