The Coptic Secret (9 page)

The man on the right also put down whatever he was carrying and raised his hands, too.

Both kept on walking toward the house.

The first one stepped over a form sprawled across the narrow front porch without giving it any particular notice. He could have stepped out of the film
Deliverance
. He was well over six feet and two hundred pounds, his face tanned by the sun. Blue eyes twinkled from under his John Deere cap. A reddish beard streaked with gray covered his lower face but not the broad lips that were curled into a smile. He was clad in bib overalls. His step had a confidence to it, a manner that seemed to say shooting a couple of men was a normal night's work.

Stereotypes exist. A lot. That's why they keep showing up in life.

The other man was much smaller and looked Latino. His eyes darted back and forth as though anticipating an attack at any moment.

The big man turned back and stooped to examine the body at his feet.

He stood and rolled it over with his brogan. "Ain't nobody I know."

Lang lowered his shotgun. "I'm happy for you."

Behind him he heard Gurt moving toward the bedroom and the gun in her purse.

Both strangers stopped at the door. "Mind if we come in?"

Lang stepped back and they both entered. The larger of the two surveyed the room. The cabin's thin frame and Sheetrock hadn't stopped many bullets. "Looks like somebody didn't much want you here."

Lang shrugged. "A man makes enemies."

The man in overalls continued to look around, nodding as though understanding a basic truth. "I'd say."

He turned his attention to Gurt as she entered the room, making no effort to hide his admiration. He doffed his cap. "Evenin', ma'am."

She held a SIG Sauer, having left Manfred in the other room despite his howls of protest. Lang felt relief as he saw Grumps slink out from behind the kitchen counter and follow the sounds of Manfred's displeasure. Everybody had made it through OK.

Gurt studied the stranger as intently as he was her. "You are to thank?"

He leaned forward, an imitation of a bear trying to bow. "My pleasure, ma'am" He extended a hand the size of a football. "Larry Henderson. I'm your neighbor."

"And a good one," Gurt said, smiling as she transferred the automatic to her left hand to slip her right into the huge paw.

If Larry noticed the weapon, he said nothing. Maybe pistol-packing mommas were the norm around here.

The little one said something Lang didn't catch.

Larry nodded. "He's right, we need to clean up this mess 'fore daylight"

Perplexed, Gurt glanced from one to the other. " 'Clean up'? Should we not call the police?"

Larry took off his cap again and clenched it in a hand, a gesture Lang guessed was a habit. He shifted from one foot to the other like a schoolboy caught passing a note in class. "Well, ma'am, I'm not sure thass a good idea. See, first, we ain' got no phones out here an'..." He shuffled shoes die size of rowboats. Then he spoke, staring into Lang's eyes as if seeking an answer to an unasked question. "An', well, I'd soon as not involve the law if you take my meaning An' if done, 'tis best done quickly."

Was that a line from Shakespeare? Unlikely. But Lang got the message loud and clear. Whatever Larry was doing was something that the long arm of the law wasn't going to help. The man had just saved Lang's ass by blowing away a couple of unknowns, voting them totally off the island- Now he was asking, almost pleading, not to involve the cops.

"Will not somebody come looking for them?" Gurt asked.

Larry shook his head. "Doubt it. They're all dressed the same like some sorta army an' carryin' those Russian guns..." "AK-47's?"

"Thass the one. Ennyhow, ain' nobody from 'round here. They's from off. I kin take a tractor, tow that car so deep in the woods they's have to send in th' hounds to find it, bury those guys where nobody'd ever look even if they wanted to find 'em. An' I got a feelin' nobody does."

There was a certain logic to what Lang's new friend said. If, as he was certain, these would-be assassins were from the same group that had killed Eon, it was unlikely anyone would be asking questions about their disappearance. Attempted arson, illegal automatic weapons and botched murders would invite the unwanted attention not only of local law enforcement but of the ATF, FBI and other federal and state agencies, not to mention the press. What Lang had in mind could not be accomplished under the scrutiny of an alphabet soup of law enforcement agencies, either.

Larry was looking around the cabin again. "Wouldn't be smart to stay here tonight."

"There is a Gasthaus nearby?" Gurt asked.

Larry gave that sort of bend/bow again. "Why, ma'am, I'd be pleasured if you'd stay with me. Mamma'd love the..."

Manfred walked slowly out of the bedroom escorted by Grumps.

Larry gave a grin of sheer joy. "No argument, now. Mamma'd love nothin' more'n than to have a tyke in the house agin."

Hours later, Gurt, Lang and Manfred had been fussed over, looked after and generally made to feel at home in a small but comfortable house while Larry and Jerranto went about work Lang had no desire to question. The living room/dining room featured a wall of shelves filled with books, hardly what Lang expected from what he had seen of his new friend and benefactor. Closer inspection revealed inexpensive and well-worn works of Shakespeare and Milton, some of the metaphysical poets as well as Shelly, Byron and Keats. Somebody in the family had a love of literature as well as shotguns.

He hadn't heard Darleen come up behind him. "Larry's grandaddy's books. 'Fore TV, he read out those book ever night. Larry's daddy did, too. Larry done read ever one of 'em, most two, three times."

That line about done quickly. It
was
from Shakespeare, perhaps
Macbeth
? Lang's surprise must have shown, for she added, "Jus' 'cause Larry couldn' afford college don' mean he's ignorant."

Lang wondered how many college graduates could even name the metaphysical poets.

"Not Tara," Gurt, whose favorite book was Gone
with the Wind,
noted, "but is Southern hospitality I have read of. It really—"

Larry's return interrupted the comment. He stood on a narrow plank porch, using a spade to knock dirt from his shoes before he swung the screen door open. He grinned at Lang and reached into a pocket in the back of his clay-encrusted overalls, producing an unlabeled bottle half full of white fluid.

He proffered it to Lang. "Have a swig. Calm your nerves."

Lang accepted hesitantly. He unscrewed the cap and smelled something like gasoline. "What is it?"

"Georgia white," the man said as proudly as though offering a fifty-year-old Bordeaux. "Made by my family for years." He nodded toward the bookshelves. "Not an eye of newt in the whole process."

Lang was hesitant to try it, but it seemed tactless to refuse the man who had not only saved their lives but also was putting a roof over their heads for the night. Through compressed lips, he let a little trickle into his mouth.

Eye of newt notwithstanding, the brew of Macbeth's witches couldn't have been more potent.

At first, he wanted to spit. Then he was afraid to for fear of setting the place on fire. His eyes blurred with tears as he forced the burning liquid down his throat. He felt as though flames were coursing down his intestinal tract.

Larry was watching every move with the anticipation of someone expecting plaudits. "Well, how was it?"

Lang wiped his lips with the back of a hand and gasped for air to cool his interior. "Just right," he choked.

"Jes' right?"

"It was any better, you wouldn't have wanted to share it. Any worse, it would've killed me."

IX.

Peachtree Center

227 Peachtree Street

Atlanta, Georgia

The Next Morning

Sara looked up from her desk in surprise as Lang hobbled through the door to the suite and made his way to his office.

"You aren't due back for another two weeks," she admonished. "You—"

". .. are giving our clients a bonus."

Lang's injuries entitled him to a prolonged leave of absence from the various courts. The nonviolent nature of the swindlers, stock cheats and other white-collar criminals Lang represented meant most could get bail. Once free, there was little upside to a trial.

Lang could almost hear Sara's jaw click shut as Gurt followed.

If Sara was surprised to see her, she concealed it well. "Hello," she said tentatively.

Gurt was not her favorite person. Even though Gurt had been nothing if not kind and polite, Lang's longtime secretary made little effort to conceal her opinion of Lang and Gurt's previous living arrangements. Lang also suspected a small bit of jealousy. Before Gurt's first arrival in Atlanta, the white-haired grandmother had pretty much run Lang's personal life since Dawn's death. Gurt was a definite challenge to her abundant mothering instincts.

Any hint of hostility fell away when Sara spied Manfred. "And who might this be?"

Manfred bowed slightly and extended a hand. "I am named Manfred Fuchs."

"Manfred
Reilly,"
Lang corrected.

Sara's eyes widened as she hastily looked from father to son and back again. She would have been blind to miss the resemblance. "When ... ? Who ... ? How ... ?"

"Sometime ago, Lang and in the normal manner," Gurt said.

"But, but you were never ..."

"Married?" Gurt smiled. "That is to the biological process irrelevant."

Not to Sara. Lang had often observed that years of membership in a Southern Baptist church made Sara worry too much that someone somewhere somehow was having fun. True or not, he tried not to show his amusement as her religion wrestled with her love for small children.

The latter won.

She fished a cellophane-wrapped peppermint from the bowl on her desk and extended one toward Manfred, who looked at the proffered treat and then at his mother.

Gurt apparently was willing to accept the peace offering. "What do you say?"

"Danke,
er, thank you."

Sara pulled the candy back. "It comes at a price. Come give your auntie Sara a hug."

For the moment, the Gurt vs. Sara battle was over. Lang had enjoyed the mini drama long enough. He had come for a specific purpose and it wasn't to introduce his new family. He limped into his office and shut the door behind him. Ignoring two stacks of pink phone-message slips, he opened his center desk drawer and reached inside. His groping fingers found a catch and there was a click as a false back popped open. From it he extracted a worn address book. Thumbing the pages, he found what he was looking for and punched numbers into the telephone's keyboard, beginning with the 202 D.C. area code.

He knew the actual phone that he was calling could be located anywhere in the world, connected by a series of shifting random relays that would make any call from the person he was seeking totally untraceable. He waited for the third ring, after which there was only a beep. No voice, no message. He keyed in his own number and hung up.

It took about two minutes before Sara buzzed him. From the noise in the background, she, Gurt and Manfred were having a swell time. "Number one for you. Man named Berkley. Wouldn't say who he's with or what he wanted other than speaking to you. Want to take it or should I tell him you're out of the office?"

Lang was already reaching for the phone to press the button that would connect him. "I'll take it. Thanks."

He pushed the first line button. "Miles! My gatekeeper tells me you wouldn't tell her what you wanted or who you were with!"

There was a slight pause, confirming Lang's guess the call was going through multiple relays. "I coulda told her, Lang, but then I'd hafta kill her. How's it goin' with you?"

"I need a little help."

Again the pause before Miles's drawl. "Damn! An' here I was thinkin' you'd called 'cause you need my wise counsel an' sage advice."

Lang smiled. Miles Berkley was still the same bullshit artist. "Miles, about two months ago a wealthy English philanthropist, name of Eon Weatherston-Wilby, was kidnapped from the British Museum and subsequently murdered."

"I think I remember. Why do all those rich Brits have two las' names, anyway?"

"Same reason Southerners like us have two last names instead of a first and last. Langford and Miles instead of Joe and Frank."

"Damn," Miles said, "an' I'd always thought it was to cover somebody's ass when they weren't sure who the father was."

Lang chuckled. "Like I said, Miles, I need your help."

This time the pause was longer than usual.

"Lang, you know I'll do what I can, but my employer takes a real dim view of sharing information with unauthorized persons."

Or with the rest of the United States government for that matter. "Let me tell you what I need. I believe Eon was killed because of certain ancient documents he had acquired and was donating to the museum, perhaps because he knew what was
in
those documents. I'd like to know where he got them."