The Sinai Secret (24 page)

One man, gun with bulbous silencer in hand, was carefully picking his way in front of a bone-filled arch. From his constant glances to his left, Lang was certain his companion was across the room, if out of view They were setting up a cross fire. If Lang had entertained doubts he was dealing with professionals, he no longer did.

At some point they would be at the row of coffins where Lang was concealed. His protruding knees would give him away. Better to use whatever bit of surprise he could, to make his move.

Then his BlackBerry beeped.

Sonnenfelsgasse 39

Vienna

At the Same Time

Adel Schiller thought at first that she had left her television on, the new color model that had replaced the old black-and-white stolen last year. She had been watching an American film when she had dozed off. Sometime later she had woken up, seen the movie was over, and gone to bed.

Then something had awakened her again.

The TV?

Slipping blue-veined feet into the furry slippers her grandchildren had given her this past Christmas, she pushed the covers aside. A longhaired dachshund hopped to the floor from the foot of the bed. Ignoring Fritzie's growl of displeasure at being disturbed, she stepped into the small living room. No, the television was off. Something else had awakened her.

With a clatter of hardware she undid the three chain locks and single dead bolt on her door and peered into the hall through the narrowest of cracks. She wasn't nosy, of course, didn't really care what her neighbors did, but after being robbed it simply made sense to know what was going on around her. That was why she peeped out into the hall every time she heard the door downstairs open, just for her own safety.

Oh, she had learned that Frau Grafner on the floor above had occasional visitors, all-night visitors, when Herr Grafner was out of town. That might have been the reason for the horrible fight she had heard right from this same doorway. And then there was that nice young man, Manfred Kellner, the one who always spoke to her. At least, she had thought he was a nice young man until she had stood at this very door and seen him kiss another young man leaving his apartment one morning!

But neither the Grafners nor Kellner had her interest at the moment. Instead, two men she had never seen before were standing in front of Herr Dr. Shaffer's door, using a key to get in. Dr. Shaffer never had guests. Oh, his
Kinder
paid infrequent visits on Sundays, but he never had
night
visitors. And even if he did, why didn't he let them in himself? She knew he was home, had seen him enter at an hour later than usual.

One of the men in the hall started to turn around, and she gently shut the door, puzzled. Where was Dr. Shaffer?

From Fritzie's low growl, he must be wondering, too.

Long-past Agency training slipped into place as comfortably as an old shoe. Lang made himself forget the man on his right for an instant, ignore his own exposure as he looked down the muzzle of his adversary's pistol wavering under the weight of the silencer.

Although Lang rationally knew he was acting in split seconds, it seemed to take forever to place the stubby sight of his own Desert Eagle on the target's belt buckle, where even a near-miss would take the man out of the fight.

He ignored another puff of a sound suppressor and the sting of brick fragments on his hands and cheek.

He squeezed off a shot, and the man on his left was screaming on the floor, a rivulet of blood coursing its way across old brick.

Lang thought he heard the damn BlackBerry buzz again as he rolled to his left just as there was another puff, and the coffin in which he had been hiding splintered.

The remaining man was not visible. There were more than enough places to hide, and he had chosen one of them, Lang guessed. On his belly he was using the rows of caskets for a shield as he crawled toward the only exit, his arms crossed commando-style.

He paused and listened, unsure whether he could hear anything among the muffling effect of wood and brick.

He could clearly make out the moans of the man he had shot.

He turned his head to glance over his shoulder. Would the weakening cries for help draw out the remaining gunman? Not if he were a professional.

Lang crawled on.

After what seemed an hour of scraping elbows on brick, Lang was at the foot of the stairs. He had little doubt his adversary was waiting for him to try to escape that way, to expose himself.

But how else was he going to get out of here?

Lang was next to one of the open caskets. Still flat on his stomach, he reached inside. What he touched felt more like leather than human skin. He probed until he found the head. A gentle tug of the hair was enough to pull it free from its long-desiccated body.

The head in his left hand, he rolled onto his back, avoiding looking at what he held. Instead he concentrated on carefully aiming the big pistol at the naked lightbulb overhead. One more whisper of a shot and his area of the crypt went dark.

It would be obvious to his opponent that Lang was going to use the darkness for a rush up the steps.

Instead Lang, still on his back, threw the skull toward the opposite wall as hard as he could. Over the edge of the casket he saw the muzzle flashes of one, two shots in the direction of the skull's trajectory.

Jumping to his feet, Lang pumped two bullets into the area from which the gunfire had come. Two coffins exploded, emptying their contents. A third shot brought a scream of pain.

There was no return fire.

Weapon with the remaining round extended, Lang approached slowly, feeling his way with the hand not holding the Desert Eagle. His fingers touched something upright, cold, and smooth. A search of his pockets produced the slim matchbox he had taken from Mirabelle's.

He might be taking a chance, but if he couldn't confirm his adversary was down, using the stairs would be a greater risk. Holding the matchbook in the same hand as his pistol, he struck a match and pressed against the wall. The sudden glare in the deep darkness almost blinded him, but he managed to light the stub of candle his fingers had touched.

Ears attuned to the slightest sound of movement, he held the light aloft.

Beside the debris of old wood shattered by the shots, a man sprawled across the floor. The bottom half of his face was a bloody pulp, evidence of the damage a fifty- caliber Magnum round could do.

Lang stooped over and looked through the pockets of the man's windbreaker. He was not surprised to find them empty except for a full clip of ammunition.

He removed his own near-empty magazine and put it in a pocket before slamming the full one into his own gun. He was headed for the stairs when his BlackBerry beeped again.

"Yes?" he snapped.

There was the briefest of pauses before the voice of Sara, his secretary, asked, "Am I interrupting something?"

Since the fall of communism, Vienna had been a relatively quiet place. No militant Arab emigres with their endless sectarian violence, no former African colonials demanding this and that. Oh, there were the pickpockets and the occasional fight in the Prater and problems in the nearby red-light district.

But multiple shootings?

To add to the mystery, no one had heard a single-shot—fifty-caliber shots. Rauch had not seen a fifty- caliber weapon since his mandatory military training in his youth. The two
Polizei
had been shot from two different guns, ballistics had told him. The two bodies in the church with a third, and the professor with yet a fourth. More slugs had been dug out of the bricks of the crypt but were too badly crushed to add a fifth gun to the melee. Handguns, judging by the several shell casings at the Stephansplatz and church crypt.

All from weapons like the two monstrous automatics found with the dead men in the crypt.

Who would want to lug around something that big?

The uniformity of weapons and the fact that no one had heard anything suggested silencers had been involved all the way around, again like the ones in the old burial ground. Professional assassins acting in concert. Professionals also judging by the total anonymity of the corpses in the church, men whose clothing had even been stripped of labels.

But to what end?

What did two professional gunmen have in common with a divorced university professor of...

Rauch pushed aside a stack of papers on his desk, sheets that included yesterday's newspaper, last week's reports, and, quite likely, the wrapper for the pastry that had been breakfast.

A tidy desk was symptomatic of a small, if not sick, mind.

He found what he was looking for on top.

A professor of chemistry, now in business as an archaeological chemist, whatever that was.

The investigating officers had found the professors apartment a wreck, obviously searched. He regarded his own office, where paper covered everything. Well, most likely searched, anyway.

For what?

The phone on his desk rang. It took two more rings for him to find the thing under—what else—a stack of papers on the credenza behind his desk.
"Ja?"

He listened carefully. He might not waste his time with useless order in his office, but his investigations were not only orderly, they were organized and thought out. Already men were at the bank denoted by check stubs at the professor's apartment to look at deposits, ascertain who had paid Hen
Doktor
for what lately. The fingerprint crew was working on the shell casings, and the area around the church searched for anyplace a weapon might have been dumped. Even this early, one Of his men had found what might be a clue.

The inspector took his suit jacket from where he had tossed it onto a chair and headed downstairs.

In the basement he entered a windowless room with a table and four chairs bolted to the cement floor. The room stank of stale sweat and tobacco smoke, although no one had dared light up, in view of the inspector's feelings about cigarettes. Two
unter
inspectors were watching a third man draw on an easel as a fourth described a face. The two policemen displayed eyes rimmed with red, and beard stubble, testimony to being roused out of bed and given assignments in the small hours.

In front of each person was a paper cup containing a brownish liquid that passed for coffee at the station. Rauch was certain it was poisonous—or, at least, not proper Viennese coffee, which amounted to the same thing.

"Am Morgen,"
the younger of the two policemen murmured without enthusiasm as Rauch entered the room.

"This is Herr Jasto Schattner, the owner of the Koenig Bakery restaurant near the Stephansplatz. He knows— knew—Herr
Doktor
Shaffer. The professor had dinner there last night with someone."

Rauch nodded to the drawing pad.

"That's him, according to Herr Schattner, the man who had dinner with the victim last night. He spoke only English."

Rauch said, "See that a copy is circulated. If he is a foreigner, I am particularly interested in your taking it to the hotels."

Both younger inspectors slumped slightly. There must be a thousand hotels in and around the city.

Hans and Fritz,
the inspector thought. The original Katzenjammer Kids, these two. Any assignment that involved leaving the meager comforts of the station house was greeted as a form of privation. "Not so glum, lads. Antiquated as we may be, we do have a fax machine."

The pair brightened noticeably.

"And the various
Bahnhof und Flughof."

Even though there were only a limited number of train stations and one airport, the two returned to expressions of being imposed upon like a host whose guests wouldn't go home.

Rauch turned to go, stopped, and looked over his shoulder. "
Danke,
Herr Schattner."

Rauch was relieved to depart the stench and confines of the room.