The Sinai Secret (27 page)

Ratting the passport against the palm of a hand, he wondered if the intruder who had left the listening device had found the false back of the drawer and noted the Couch name. It was a chance he'd simply have to take.

He drove out of the condo and turned north instead of south toward downtown and his office. Stopping at a branch bank, where he made a substantial cash withdrawal, he drove a mile or so farther and parked the Porsche at Lenox Square, a high-end mall that included a Delta Airlines reservation office. The shopping center's doors were just opening for the day.

He was aware that paying for tickets in cash was sure to invite the attention of the Transportation Safety people, but a search of his baggage and person was the price he would pay for leaving whoever might be watching behind. He was fairly certain the Agency's passport would pass scrutiny both in appearance and in verifying the number.

He would, then, be traveling as Joel Couch, an eccentric who abhorred that most American of conveniences, the credit card.

Ticket in the pocket of his jacket, he stopped at a Starbucks to watch the mall slowly fill. He could see no one who showed any interest in him. He emptied his cup of a liquid that tasted more like confection than coffee, as well it should.

He smiled as he walked out, imagining one of the inner city's panhandlers: "Hey, mister! Can you spare five bucks for a large chilled Kenyan mocha?"

That evening he had dinner at Alicia's. She lived in a small town house in Vinings, a residential community across the Chattahoochee River. It had a past as a semi- rural locale that included a few quaint cottages and a train station. The station was now an expensive boutique. Condos and gated subdivisions, equally indistinguishable, had reduced whatever bucolic aesthetic there might have been to a single rambling clapboard cottage reminiscent of another age. The house had survived only as the site of an upscale restaurant specializing in entrees cooked in fruit jellies.

In jeans and a T-shirt designed to display her figure, Alicia met him at the door. Her hair, shoulder-length, framed her face. A emerald in the shape of a heart sparkled on her finger.

Lang gave her a perfunctory hug. "Don't you look nice! I don't remember the rock."

She let him in, closing the door and holding up her hand for inspection. "Don't usually wear it. It was an engagement ring, only good thing left of a bad marriage."

Lang followed her toward the back of the house, noting tasteful contemporary furniture punctuated with an occasional antique. "So why wear it tonight?"

She stopped so suddenly he almost ran into her. Turning, she took both of his hands in hers. "Because I'm through brooding about a failure. I'm in a new house in a new city and with a man who's fun and entertaining."

"I'm being damned with faint praise? Is that the female equivalent of, 'All the girls like her' or, 'She's a great cook'?"

"I'll bet it's the first nice thing anyone's said about you all day."

"Maybe. But my dog loves me."

She dropped one of his hands and led him to a small deck; a view of Atlanta's skyline serenely floated on a sea of trees. "Single-malt Scotch, if I recall."

He took the sweating glass she was offering. "It's clear to me there's nothing wrong with your memory."

There was an energy between them, the electricity a woman projected when she had something in mind more than an affectionate embrace. In college dorms Lang had participated in the ageless debate of whether a woman decided she would bed a man when she first met him, playing out the event like some sort of drama. Lang never

knew the answer, but he had come to recognize the signals when a decision had been made to implement the choice. Tonight, as the saying went, he would get lucky.

The meal, fish poached in a wine sauce with steamed vegetables, would be act one.

Lang sipped a glass of chilled white wine. "A California chardonnay?"

Alicia was peering over her glass. "You can't tell me the vineyard and vintage?"

"I'm not that much of an oenophile."

She put her glass down. "Oh? Then how did you know...?"

"I saw the bottle as we came through the kitchen."

She studied his face a moment. "Do you always notice the details?"

Lang was looking back at her. "I try. You know as well as I do that winning a case often depends on it."

"I have a confession to make."

"I have a friend who hears them professionally."

She shook her head, sending a wave of red hair flying. "You're going to hear this one."

"Do I get to choose the penance?"

"Depends."

"On what?"

"On whether I want to serve it or not."

Lang pretended to gravely consider this for a moment. "So, confess."

"I had a conference call this afternoon, a really boring one with the Justice Department in Washington."

"A bunch of Department of Justice lawyers are tedious? That's not a confession; it's fact."

She waved him silent. "I had nothing better to do than an occasional 'uh-huh' or 'uh-uh' and to play with the computer. So I looked you up on the bar's Web site. There's a big gap of time between college and law school."

Lang tried not to let her know he was getting uncomfortable. "Lots of people try to earn an honest living before they become lawyers."

"True. But I thought about that... that bit of excitement in Underground. Made me wonder if you were involved in something... something shady."

"What criminal lawyer isn't?"

She grew serious. "I used my DOJ creds to get into lists of former government employees. At various times you were listed as being a trade attache, a chargé d'affaires, diplomatic researcher, and in charge of cultural exchanges."

"Job instability: It's one of my less attractive features. Besides, I was never in charge of anyone's affairs. They did it all on their own."

She was staring at him as though he had suddenly dropped out of the sky. "Lang, I've been with the government long enough to know those positions are phony, usually used as cover—albeit thin cover—for intelligence agencies. You were some kind of spy."

He held up three fingers. "Scout's honor, I never spied on anyone."

"Would you tell me if you still were?"

"I wouldn't be much of a spy if I did, would I?" He saw her face fall. "But I'm not."

"Sure would explain someone taking a shot at you."

"So would a jealous husband."

Her mouth twitched, and she failed to straighten it before breaking into laughter. "Do you take anything seriously?"

"Only those things that deserve it."

"Do I? No, wait, I don't think I want the answer."

"Hear it anyway. Yes, Ms. Warner, very seriously. Now, do I get to set your penance?"

"As I said, it depends."

"How 'bout we have dessert in bed?"

She stood. "Direct, aren't you?" "I try."

"I suppose I should worry that you won't respect me in the morning." She was already moving inside.

He stood. "Don't forget 'I don't know you well enough.'"

She turned with a malicious grin. "Why is it I feel that if I knew you better, I wouldn't do this?"

Lang didn't leave the town house until the next morning.

His mind was too occupied with promises unspoken and consequences just now considered to notice that the landscape crew paring already manicured grass was the only one he had seen in years that included no Hispanics.

It was only after he was almost a mile away that the workers, four large, muscular men who acted with the concert of military personnel, packed up their equipment and crossed the street to Alicia's residence.