The Pegasus Secret (12 page)

Miles made no effort to even sound as if he believed him. “Vatican, like where the Pope hangs? You want to fill out the forms for future canonization, right?”

“Miles, Miles, you are letting cynicism poison your otherwise bright and cheerful disposition. I simply want a brief conference with one of the Holy Father’s art historians.”

The phone connection did nothing to diminish the snort of derision. “Right. Like I would engage only in intellectual conversation were I alone on a desert island with Sharon Stone.”

Lang sighed theatrically. “Miles, I’m serious. I have a client who is about to spend a fortune on a work of religious art. The world’s most renowned expert on the artist is in the Vatican. Would I lie to you?”

“Like I would if my wife found lipstick on my fly. Okay, okay, I can’t give you a roster of Rome assets, don’t have the clearance to call it up, anyway. Just so happens, though, that I heard Gurt Fuchs is presently assigned to the trade attaché at the Rome embassy.”

Lang couldn’t remember if he had taken the time to thank Miles before hanging up the phone. There had been a time when Gurtude Fuchs had made him forget everything else.

Lang’s first career had been with the Agency, the job he referred to in his mind as being an office-bound James Bond. Like most embryonic spies, he had trained at Camp Perry near Williamsburg, Virginia. Known as the Farm by its graduates, there he had learned the arcane arts of code, surveillance and the use of weapons ranging from firearms and knives to garrote and poison. His performance had been either too good or too poor (depending on the point of view) for a posting to the Fourth Directorate, Ops. Instead, he had been sent to a dreary office across the street from the Frankfurt railway station where he spent his days with the Third Directorate, Intelligence. Rather than cloak and dagger, his tools had consisted of computers, satellite photos, Central European newspapers and equally humdrum equipage.

In 1989, Lang had seen his future in the Agency shrunk by the much-heralded Peace Dividend and changed by shifting priorities. Even the grime-encrusted office with a view of the
Bahnhof
in Frankfurt would be a source of nostalgia when he was forced to learn Arabic or Farsi and stationed in some place where a hundred-degree day seemed balmy. Dawn, his new bride, had drawn the line at including a floor-length burka in her trousseau.

He had taken his retirement benefits and retreated to law school.

Gurt, an East German refugee, had been a valued linguist, analyst and expert on the German Democratic Republic, who was also stuck in the Agency’s Third Directorate.

Gurt and Lang had joined several couples for a ski weekend in Garmish-Partenkirchen. In his mind, Gurt would always be associated with the Post Hotel, Bavarian food, and the slopes of the Zugspitze. The resulting affair had been hot enough to burn out a few months later when he met Dawn on a brief trip back to the States.

To Lang’s surprise and chagrin, Gurt had seemed more relieved than jilted. They had shared a friendship ever since, though, a relationship renewed as scheduling and posting allowed: an occasional drink in Frankfurt, a dinner in Lisbon until his resignation. By that time she was due a promotion to management, a result of the Agency’s begrudging and Congressionally mandated sexual egalitarianism more than her acknowledged abilities. Her talents were not limited to language but ranged from cryptography on the computer to marksmanship on the firing range.

On mature reflection, perhaps it was just as well Gurt did not take the end of their romance too seriously.

When Saint Peter’s was only a couple of blocks away, Michelangelo’s dome filling the northern horizon, Lang
looked for a pay phone. He was thankful he wasn’t in one of those European countries where public phones are hoarded like treasures, available only in branches of the national postal system. In Rome, pay phones were plentiful if functioning ones were not. He had chosen this part of the city from which to phone. A trace of any call made from here would lead to one of the most heavily visited places in the world. Though not impossible, it would be difficult to pinpoint the specific location of any one phone quickly enough to catch someone involved in a conversation of only a couple of minutes.

If anyone were tracing the call.

He dialed the embassy number and listened to the creaks, groans and buzzing of the system.

When a voice answered in Italian, Lang asked for Ms. Fuchs in the trade section.

The voice smoothly transitioned to English. “May I tell her who is calling?”

“Tell her Lang Reilly’s in town and would like to buy her dinner.”

“Lang!” Gurt shouted moments later. If she wasn’t happy to hear from him, she had added acting to her list of achievements. “What carries you to Rome?”

Gurt still had not totally mastered the English idiom.

“What brought me here was seeing you again.”

She gave a giggle almost girlish in tone. “Still the
Shiest
. . . , er, thrower of bullshit, Lang.” He could imagine her cocking an eyebrow. “And have you brought your wife with you to see me?”

No way to explain without staying on the line a lot longer than he intended. “Not married anymore. You free for dinner?”

“For you, if not free, at least inexpensive.”

She had mastered lines that died with vaudeville.

They had no common history in Rome, no place he
could designate by reference in case someone was monitoring the perpetual tap on all Agency lines. Lang’s choices were a secluded place where he could be sure neither had been followed or a very crowded spot where they would be more difficult to spot. The more potential witnesses would also mean more safety.

Crowds won.

“The Piazza Navona, you know it?”

“Of course. It is one of the most famous . . .”

“Fountain of the Three Rivers. Say about eighteen hundred hours?”

“Isn’t that a bit early for dinner?”

Most Italians don’t even think about the evening meal until nine o’clock, 2100 on the twenty-four-hour clock common in Europe. They do, however, begin to consume appertifs long before.

“Want to see you in the sunlight, Gurt. You always looked best in the light.”

He hung up before she could reply.

Like most lawyers, Lang was connected to the womb of his office by the umbilical cord of the telephone. He could have no more failed to call in than a fetus could fail to take sustenance. He had not had the time to purchase an international calling card, so the call was going to require considerable patience in dealing with an overseas operator whose English might be marginal.

Sara answered on the second ring. “Mr. Reilly’s office.”

Lang glanced at his watch and subtracted five hours. It was shortly after nine
A.M
. in Atlanta.

“Me, Sara. Anything I need to know, any problems?”

“Lang?” Her voice was brittle with tension. “Mr. Chen called.”

Chen? Lang didn’t have any client . . . Wait. He had had a client, Lo Chen, several years ago. The man had been accused of involvement with the growing number of Asian
mobs in the Atlanta area. Not believing any authority would be stupid enough not to tap the line of the lawyer representing a man accused of a crime, Chen had insisted Lang use pay phones to call him at a rotating list of phone booths. Complying with his client’s wishes, Lang used one of the phones in the lobby of the building.

What did Sara mean?

“Do you remember Mr. Chen’s number?” Sara sounded as though she was about to cry.

“I’m not sure. . . .”

Sara said something, words directed away from the phone.

A man’s voice asked, “Mr. Reilly?”

“Who the hell are you?” Lang demanded, angry that someone would interrupt a call to his own office.

There was a mirthless chuckle. “Surprised you didn’t recognize me, Mr. Reilly.”

Lang felt his lunch sink. There had to be something wrong, terribly wrong. “Morse?”

“The same, Mr. Reilly. Now, where be you?”

“What the hell are you doing in my office?”

“Trying to find you, Mr. Reilly.”

“You got more questions, I’ll answer ’em when I get home. Or on your dime.”

“And just when might you be coming home?”

There was something in the tone, a come-here-little-fish-all-I-want-to-do-is-gut-you quality to the question that activated Lang’s paranoia like a tripped burglar alarm.

“You’re asking so you can meet my plane with a brass band, right?”

There was a pause, one of those moments the writers of bodice-rippers described as pregnant. Lang would have called this one plain ominous.

Then Sara apparently took the phone back. “They’re here to arrest you, Lang!”

“Arrest? Lemme talk to Morse.”

When the detective was back on the line, Lang’s concern was beginning to outweigh anger. “What is this B.S.? You sure as hell can’t begin to prove I’ve obstructed your investigation.”

In fact, with the Fulton County prosecutor’s conviction rate, it was doubtful he could convince a jury of Hannibal Lecter’s violation of the Pure Food and Drug Act.

There was another dry chuckle, the sound of wind through dead leaves. “Proovin’ not be my job, Mr. Reilly. Arrestin’ is. Shouldn’t come as any big surprise I got a murder warrant here with your name on it. Where were you ’round noon yesterday?”

On my way to Dallas with a false passport as ID, Lang thought sourly. There would be no record that Lang Reilly had been on that plane.

“Murder?” Lang asked. “Of who, er, whom?”

Even stress doesn’t excuse poor grammar.

“Richard Halvorson.”

“Who is he?”

“Was. He was the doorman at that fancy highrise of yours.”

Lang had never asked Richard’s last name. “That’s absurd! Why would I kill the doorman?”

“Not for me to say. Mebbe he didn’t get your car fast enough.”

Just what the world needed: another Lennie Briscoe.

“And I didn’t hear you say where you were yesterday,” Morse added.

“I barely knew him,” Lang protested.

“Musta known him fairly well: left your dog with him. And he was shot with a large-caliber automatic just like the Browning be in your bedside table.”

Lang fought the urge to simply drop the phone and run. The more he knew, the better he could refute what appeared
to be absurd charges. “If you’ve been into my bedside table, I assume you had a warrant.”

“Uh-huh. Nice and legal. Got it when your fingerprints showed up on the shell casings. Gun’s been fired recently but ballistics report won’t be back till tomorrow. I’m bettin’ be your gun killed him.” Morse was enjoying this. “You got somethin’ to say, you come back here an’ say it. FBI gets involved, you become a fugitive. You don’t want them on your trail.”

Me and Richard Kimble, Lang thought.

Lang knew he should sever the connection as quickly as possible but he couldn’t, not just yet. “The dog I left with Richard . . . ?”

Apparently Sara could hear at least part of the conversation. Her voice was clear in the background. “I’ve got him, Lang, don’t you . . .”

Lang hung up with at least one problem solved and walked away in a daze. They had done it, of course, killed Richard with his Browning—the one Lang had loaded, leaving his prints on the shells—and replacing it where it was sure to be found. Clever. Now every cop connected to the Internet anywhere in the world would be looking for him. Interpol, the Italian Policia, everyone would be doing their work for them.

How long had Lang been on the phone? Long enough for a trace? Unlike the old movies, computers could race through area switchboards with the speed of light. But an international call involved satellites, no wires connected to specific telephones. The best the computer could do was give general coordinates as to location. The bad news was that a trace would reveal Lang wasn’t in the U.S. of A., something Morse would have had to wait to find out after getting the record of the Miami-Rome flight in the check of credit cards that was standard procedure in any fugitive hunt. Without a current bogus passport, Lang had had to
use his real name and plastic for that leg. In today’s terror- conscious environment, paying cash for an international flight would have subjected him to scrutiny he had not wanted.

Atlanta
Twenty minutes later

Detective Franklin Morse stared at the fax again, although he had already studied every detail of both pages. The quality was poor, but good enough to recognize a copy of an airline ticket from Miami to Rome. The name of the passenger was clear enough: Langford Reilly. So was the transmitted photograph, grainy and streaked.

Reilly looked like he was walking past some sort of official on the other side of a booth, maybe customs or immigration in an airport. That would make sense if Reilly had fled to Rome, if that was where Reilly was when the detective had spoken to him not half an hour before.

What didn’t make sense were the two pieces of paper themselves. They had arrived on the machine used exclusively by the detectives in the squad room in Atlanta’s City Hall on East Ponce de Leon. Not a state secret but not exactly a published number, either. Verification of the numbers at the top of the pages led to a public facsimile machine in Rome.