The Sinai Secret (12 page)

"This is the Oost-Indisch Huis," Louis proclaimed, pointing to an attractive seventeenth-century brick-and-concrete building. "It was the offices of the Dutch East India Company. Now it belongs to the university. You have heard of the Dutch East India Company, yes?"

Lang was not so much interested in one of the world's most outrageously successful commercial enterprises as he was in making sure they weren't followed. "Yes."

Louis stopped before an ornate entranceway, waiting for Lang to catch up. Both men entered what looked from the street to be a series of buildings between two tree-lined canals with a block-long bicycle rack in front. As Lang soon discovered, he was in one of many passageways linking a large number of structures.

They passed through a courtyard, an outdoor cafe filled with students. One, a large blonde, followed him with blue eyes. Once again Gurt rose as a specter, this time dressed in motorcycle leathers, the same ones she had worn when she saved his life in Italy, her long blond hair flowing around her face. Two women, Dawn and Gurt: one his wife, one he wished had been. Both gone from his life.

He shook his head as though he could scatter the memories.

"Mr. Reilly?"

Louis was standing outside a door with Yadish's name etched on the glass pane.

Louis fumbled in his pockets and produced a ring of keys. He tried one. The click of a dead bolt signaled that he had found the right one, and he pushed the door open, ushering Lang inside. The room resembled the lab in Atlanta, except it was slightly smaller, and racks of test tubes and beakers flanking Bunsen burners occupied two long counters, instead of electronic equipment. Another difference was that this room looked as though Yadish might return at any moment.

At the end of one counter, in front of a long-legged stool on casters, was a cloth-bound ledger, the sort of thing Lang would have expected to see in any company's accounting department before computers made paper all but obsolete. From where he stood Lang could see that a number of pages had been torn out.

Thumbing through the pages, he asked, "Did Dr. Yadish keep notes here as well as electronically?"

Louis was standing in front of a computer on the other counter. "I do not know."

Lang left the book where it was to look over Louis's shoulder as the computer hummed to life. "The ledger is a journal of sorts. I can't read the language, but the last date's less than a week ago."

Louis left the machine to boot up and viewed the open pages. "A list of purchases—nitrate of mercury, two hundred milligrams, sodium phosphate, and so on. I would suppose he kept an account of the chemicals he used."

Both men returned to the blank blue screen.

Louis tapped a series of keys and frowned. "Nothing."

Lang could see that. "Did the professor have a password, perhaps?"

Louis was still pecking away. "He may have, but we are getting nothing. It is as if the hard drive is blank."

Or gone or erased.

"Did he have any special place to put things, a particular drawer, a file cabinet?"

Louis nodded and pulled the stool behind him as he went to the far wall, where a row of cabinets crowned two industrial sinks. "Steady me, please?"

Lang held the stool as the Belgian climbed up to kneel on its seat. He opened the cabinets to reveal rows of labeled opaque jars. He moved one or two before asking Lang to push him farther to his left.

"Eureka," he said with a smile, removing a container in each hand.

Behind the row of vessels Lang could see the black face of a safe built into the wall. "Swell. I don't suppose you know the combination?"

Louis's grin widened. "No need." He handed Lang several of the containers to put aside. He held one up, however, rotating it so Lang could see a series of four numbers on the back. "Dr. Yadish could never remember, so he wrote it down. I saw him take this down to open the safe."

Thirty seconds later the door swung open. From below the cabinet where Lang stood he could see nothing in it.

"Why keep an empty safe?" he asked rhetorically.

"Not empty." Louis reached into the safe and held up two letter-sized envelopes.

He handed them to Lang and climbed off the stool. Lang opened the first. Inside was a grainy white powder similar to the traces streaked across the counter in Dr. Lewis's lab. The second contained the same.

Lang wondered if Detective Morse had gotten the test results back from the state crime lab yet. If only the stuff hadn't vanished in the APD's property room, the evidence locker that seemed to have a leak bigger than the
Titanic's.

He'd call Morse as soon as—

He heard the door behind him shut.

"I'll take that, Mr. Reilly."

Lang turned slowly. Leather Jacket and another man stood just inside the door. Each held an automatic obscured by a silencer.

He heard Louis's surprised intake of air, something between a gasp and a grunt.

Lang mentally kicked himself. He had fallen for one of the hoarier surveillance tactics. Leather Jacket had had every intention of being spotted, of keeping Lang's attention, so that when he failed to follow Lang and Louis from the copy shop, Lang wouldn't notice a second tail.

Shit.

The two men were a good five feet apart. No chance Lang could draw the SIG Sauer from its holster and fire before at least one of the intruders could shoot.

Lang slowly raised his hands, his fingers manipulating the envelopes so that one was squarely behind the other. "What can I do for you gentlemen?"

Leather Jacket motioned with his weapon. "The envelope you have in your hand, Mr. Reilly, put it on the counter and slide it toward me."

There was a trace of an accent Lang couldn't identify.

As Lang slowly lowered the hand with the packets in it, he turned his profile slightly so the hand was briefly hidden from the intruders. He let one envelope drop into a jacket pocket. He hoped the widening of Louis's eyes didn't give the sleight of hand away.

The question was whether these two intended to take what they had come for and leave, or if the plan included making sure Lang did not trouble them further. The silencers on each gun did not suggest a happy ending. It was unlikely a man would risk carrying something that bulky if he had no intent of using it.

If Lang was going to do something, now seemed about the right time.

But what?

SIXTEEN

Headquarters, Atlanta Police Department

Ponce de Leon Avenue

Atlanta, Georgia

At the Same Time

Det. Franklin Morse read the report for a third time. It made no sense. None. Somebody over at the state crime lab been sampling the shit the narcs sent for analysis from drug busts. Either that or the place had gone loony tunes.

The powder from that professor's lab over at Georgia Tech... Something here was totally and terminally fucked. But then, why should Morse be surprised? Everything that had to do with that Reilly guy
Was
equally screwed. Couple of years back a burglar had taken a dive off Reilly's twenty-fourth-story balcony. Year after that, some dude put enough sulfur nitrate and diesel fuel in Reilly's little toy of a car to reduce it to metallic confetti.

No reason, no explanation.

The worn casters of Morse's swivel chair squeaked as he pushed back from his cubicle and tried to think of something else for a second or two. This report combined with Reilly was enough to ensure a permanent migraine.

Think of something else.
The hum of the office, the sound of rain.

He did not have to look out a window to know it was raining. He could hear the dripping of water from leaks in the football field-sized roof into a dozen or so buckets, trays, and whatever else could be requisitioned from a cash-strapped city. It wasn't enough to keep the smell of mildew out of the worn and soiled electric blue carpet or the faded and peeling gray wall covering.

City Hall East, they called it. An old, clapped-out, and outdated Sears mail-order center was what is was, a real estate acquisition from the venerable old retailer that rivaled only the sale of Manhattan for twenty-six dollars' worth of beads in naivete.

The city's naivete.

But the purchase had funneled a lot of cash in commissions to the then-mayor's friends, as well as demonstrating that his minority-participation plan would really work.

And that P. T. Barnum had been right.

The neighborhood had been so tough that female officers demanded escorts to the dark, damp parking lot. There were more winos, hookers, and small-time thieves on the streets than cops.

But that was changing. Fifty-dollar-a-week flops were being transformed into fashionable loft condos for yuppies and dinks (double income, no kids), and word was, the city was going to sell the old brick pile to developers who, no doubt, were friends of the present mayor.

Morse pushed his chair farther back, almost colliding with the woman who had the cubicle next to his. He stood and, clutching the report, made his way to the captain's office across the room. Let the brass try to make sense of this one.

If Morse couldn't solve the problem, he could do the next best thing: kick it upstairs.

SEVENTEEN

University of Amsterdam

"I said, slide the envelope toward me," Leather Jacket repeated.

Lang was now about 90 percent certain he and Louis were not supposed to leave this laboratory alive. The silencers, the fact that Leather Jacket had to have been told Lang was likely armed but made no effort to take his weapon—neither bode well.

He gave the envelope a halfhearted push a few inches.

"The envelope, Mr. Reilly."

Leather Jacket's irritation was obvious.

Lang lifted the packet and flicked his wrist, sending the envelope spinning toward the door.

The two intruders' reflexively lifted their eyes and reached, if only for a split second.

Not much.

But all he had.

Lang slammed Louis under the adjacent counter as he rolled under the other, freeing his automatic.

A string of spitting sounds filled the room as splinters, glass, and cement flooring fragments flew like shrapnel.

Lang popped up on the far side of the counter and let loose a volley of his own. Leather Jacket cursed, spun, yanked the door open, and staggered out, blood flowing down his leg. He had dropped his pistol.

His companion stood against the wall as his finger slipped from his weapon. The man started to say something as a dark red stain spread across the front of his shirt as though the bladder of ink in an old-fashioned fountain pen had leaked.

His feet seemed to take forever to slide out from under him as he sat on the floor.

Lang was beside him before the wet breathing sound stopped. He kicked the gun out of reach before a hasty search of his. clothes revealed just what Lang had expected: nothing. No ID, no wallet, a total absence of anything by which he might be identified.

The trademark of a professional assassin.

The room stank of cordite and was hazy with burned gunpowder.

Louis crawled out from under his counter and wobbled on shaky knees. He looked at the dead man and quickly averted his eyes. Lang was certain the Belgian was going to throw up. Instead he stared at Lang with equal shock and horror, as if he were observing his boss sprouting a second head.

He muttered something in French, then, "Monsieur Reilly, I..."

Then he lost it, the old Technicolor yawn.

A man stuck his head in the door and asked something in French.

Lang followed his bewildered gaze around the devastated laboratory, then to the still-heaving Louis. "Sorry. I can't ever remember whether you can add acid to water. Or is it water to acid?"

The man left the door open. Lang could hear him shouting as he ran down the hall.

By this time Louis had recovered somewhat, although he still looked like he wouldn't be sitting down to a bowl of
moules
anytime soon.

"Louis," Lang said evenly, "listen closely. I'm going after the other guy. In a few minutes the police will be here."

He nodded. At least he understood something.

Lang continued. "You are to tell them he took me with him."

He seemed to comprehend so far.

"Those men came in here and we jumped them,
comprendez-vous pas?"

He didn't.

"It is very important that we say the same thing. We thought we were going to be shot and killed, so we attacked first. In the scuffle one of them got shot. The other made me go with him, used me as a shield."

He might as well have been trying to explain algebra to Grumps.