The Sinai Secret (21 page)

Named for a London landmark nearby, the Marble Arch had the worn-at-the-elbows look of a destination for tourists on a budget, traveling salesmen on commission, or a spouse on a lark. Lang's view was of a brick building perhaps five feet distant, but the room was clean and utilitarian.

He didn't intend to be there long, anyway.

He consulted a phone book and left the hotel. At the entrance he paused for a full minute, as though uncertain where he was going. He could see no one loitering in doorways, and there were few store windows to attract shoppers. A stroll around the block revealed a dark- skinned woman haggling with a greengrocer, a young mother walking twins, and a liveried chauffeur sneaking a quick smoke as he listlessly wiped the hood of a vintage Bentley free of imaginary spots.

Lang assumed he was alone.

A walk up to Knights Bridge Road took him past the part of Hyde Park known as Speakers' Corner, once the site of public executions, where the condemned were allowed to speak their minds, adding to the general entertainment before mounting the thirteen steps of the gallows. The gibbet was long gone, but the tradition of radical and unpopular speech lingered. Two men, both unshaven with long hair, were shouting at unconcerned passersby.

A block farther and he turned into a building flying the Union Jack. A small sign outside announced its function as a library. Inside, Lang stopped to whisper to an elderly man, who pointed him to the computer room.

Seated in front of the latest equipment, Lang called up Google and typed in
alchemy,
the quasi-scientific quest of a method of turning base metals into silver and gold. He was overpowered by the number of references. He was going to be here a little longer than he had planned.

Five hours later he only reluctantly left his machine at the prodding of the same old gentleman, this time announcing the closing of the facility for the day. Once back on the street, Lang stretched his arms and arched his back, surprised at how quickly the afternoon had retreated.

What he had thought to be simply misinformed medieval science was more, much more.

First, the practice of alchemy had its origins somewhere before Aristotle, a philosophy by which the soul or being of man could be enriched, life prolonged, and enlightenment achieved. He had tried to hurry through the purely ideological theories to spend more with the scientific.

Medieval scientists, or "philosophers," as they were called, had included no small number of charlatans, as the practice might suggest. It had, though, attracted some of the more serious minds of the time, including Roger Bacon, and Isaac Newton of falling-apple fame. Also Robert Boyle, whose observations, Lang was informed, were viable today and dealt with volume of gases. Lang was unsure what kinds, but unlikely those generated by Rachel's cooking and Mexican restaurants.

In Sir Isaac's time, the prevailing theory had been that all matter was composed of a combination of the four basic elements: fire, water, air, and earth. By correctly altering the proportions of these elements in, say, lead, gold would result.

There were scraps of writing from alchemists that seemed possibly relevant: John French, in his 1651
The Art of Distillation,
described fire that would keep more than a thousand years unless its container were opened. What containers? Like the ones in Lewis's and Yadish's laboratories? Under
definitions
in one article,
comminution
Was "reduction of a substance to powder by means of heat."

There were also bibliographies numbering hundreds of volumes, books Lang would never have time to read in a lifetime, let alone before his pursuers caught up with him. He settled for four names of people who maintained Web sites concerning alchemy. He discarded the first two upon browsing their sites and finding one published a small magazine on Wiccans and alchemy. He could do without witchcraft, although his subject was only marginally more distant from the black arts. The second described himself as "sorcerer extraordinaire." Lang passed for the same reason. The third site had not been updated in over a year, and Lang's query to the e-mail address was undeliverable. The fourth, a Dr. Heimlich Shaffer in Vienna, displayed a more comforting curriculum vitae as an archeological chemist, whatever that was.

Outside the library, Lang tried the phone number given by the Web site and understood most of a message recorded in German that said he should leave a message. Lang decided against it, wondering if Wiccans and warlocks used answering devices or if astral impulse sufficed.

Once back at the hotel he called Jacob and listened to a very normal request that he leave a number. If the professor in Vienna was going to be any help, having all the facts possible was going to be necessary: Templar cathedrals, a new, or unknown, version of Exodus... Were they related, and if so, how would two scientists seeking a new energy source an ocean apart come up with the same powder that levitated and became glass and gold? The answer, if there was one, might lead him to who was trying to end the energy project and kill him in the process.

At least, he hoped it would.

He had no other means of ending a chase that had already become deadly.

5

TWENTY-NINE

Schwechat International Airport

Vienna

Three Days Later

The Vienna airport terminal is small compared to those in London, Paris, or Rome. Rather than overpowering architecture, gently curving sides of shining blue glass give passengers the sense of being embraced upon arrival.

At least, Lang thought so as he peered out of the window of the foundation's Gulfstream IV The aircraft had left the United States to deliver a team of pediatricians to Greenland, bound for the Arctic Cirde and a rumored outbreak of some strain of measles among children of one of the Eskimo tribes. The mission complete, Lang had arranged for the plane and crew to proceed to Scotland.

He was fairly certain his arrival was unknown to the mysterious group who apparently wanted to kill him. He had had to show no identification to purchase a British rail ticket from London to Glasgow, meet the plane, and depart minutes later.

Both England and Austria were European Union countries. No passport nor customs were required, and no official note of his arrival was made other than the aircraft's manifest or general declarations. Since these documents were rarely verified, Lang had donned the gray suit with epaulets on the shoulders worn by the foundation's flight crew. The general decs would show pilot, copilot, and two cabin attendants, one male, one female.

He hoped he had successfully concealed both his departure from London and his arrival here, although a careful check of the departure documents would show one fewer crew member when the plane returned to Atlanta with a very perplexed MD on board who would never guess his urgent summons to the foundation's headquarters was no more than camouflage for the Gulf- stream's side trip to Vienna.

With a single suitcase containing two copies of Jacob's translation, the SIG Sauer, and a change of clothes, Lang joined the other crew members in a casual stroll through the terminal along glossy tiles the color of butter as they reflected brightly lit shops and overhead lighting.

As far as Lang could tell, no one paid them the slightest bit of attention.

They parted company at the transportation exit, the crew taking a bus to a nearby hotel and Lang a taxi. Twenty minutes later he was on the Karntner Ring Strasse, if a swath that included tram tracks, four lanes of traffic, a middle green space, and four more traffic lanes could simply be described as a road. A tram's bell rang angrily as the cab made a U-turn to stop at the door of the Imperial Hotel.

Of the two Belle Epoch hotels of Vienna, the Sacher Haus was better known to tourists, but the Imperial boasted a guest list that had included Richard Wagner as well as the triumphant Adolf Hitler, in town to celebrate the 1938 Anschluss.

It was not the sort of place one would expect to house itinerant flight crews, but the man in the long-tailed coat behind the highly polished mahogany desk did not seem to notice the uniform. Lang gave him a foundation credit card, one that did not have his name on it, along with his passport, and signed the registration with an intentionally illegible signature, declining an offer for assistance with his single bag. Passing through the heavily carpeted lobby, Lang turned left into to a small vestibule housing ornate elevators.

His room, wallpapered a tasteful green, was furnished in a style that elsewhere would have been garish. Here, the gilt-edged furniture, swagged drapes, and elaborately made-up bed seemed perfectly in place, a memory of nineteenth-century Hapsburg grandeur. Lang was relieved to see the theme did not carry over to the bathroom. Modern fixtures and a multiheaded shower stall gleamed under operating-room brightness.

Checking his room's door and windows for security, Lang took out his cell phone to call Dr. Shaffer, who should be expecting him. The phone was answered on the second ring by a voice that Lang recognized from two previous conversations.

"Dr. Shaffer?"

"Ja?"

"Lang Reilly. We spoke a couple of times."

There was an almost imperceptible pause, the short delay as the mind switched from one language to another. "You are now here in Vienna?"

"The Imperial Hotel. Maybe you could drop by, have a beer or two, and we could talk?"

Another pause, this one longer.

"I would prefer another place, one where I will be able to recognize strangers as strangers. The Koenig Bakery. Do you know it?"

There were hundreds if not thousands of small restaurants in Vienna.

"'Fraid not."

The professor gave him directions.

Twenty minutes later Lang was walking beside the baroque buildings of old Vienna. Mozart had lived and composed within a block or so, written
The Marriage of Figaro
in an apartment on the dead-end Blutgasse. Johann Strauss had formed the world's first waltz orchestra nearby. Both Beethoven and Schubert had died here. The last Hapsburg emperors, including the kindly Franz Joseph, who described himself as the empire's chief bureaucrat, had worshiped at the Stephansdom, whose Gothic spires were visible over the rooflines.