The Bonaparte Secret

CHAPTER TWO

Law offices of Langford Reilly

Peachtree Center

227 Peachtree Street, Atlanta

Three days later

Lang Reilly tossed the last of the pink telephone-message slips into the trash and turned on his desktop computer. Sara had taken most of his e-mail but there was enough requiring his attention to keep him busy most of the morning: a notice of hearing on a motion to suppress evidence in the federal court here in Atlanta, a judge’s questions about a pretrial order he had filed in another case, a bond hearing in the local state court. He shook his head at the last. The client, one of the inventory of pro bono clients Lang kept, couldn’t afford a lawyer. He surely couldn’t pay the bondsman, no matter how low the bail. A total waste of time but one of the procedures the court required.

The phone on his desk buzzed. A quick glance showed the intercom between him and the outer office was the line being used.

“Yes ma’am?”

“The Reverend Bishop Groom is here.”

Sara’s voice bristled with resentment, no doubt at the bishop’s failure to make an appointment. A white-haired prototype of someone’s grandmother, Sara had served as surrogate mother and would-be social director before Gurt’s arrival. She still was secretary, accountant, office manager and a zealous guardian of his time. “Can you see him now?”

The question was for the visitor’s benefit. Sara knew exactly what Lang was doing at the moment.

“Send him in.”

The Reverend Bishop William Groom was, as far as Lang could tell, self-ordained. His nondenominational church in one of Atlanta’s bedroom communities had grown from a few hundred members to well over six thousand, necessitating no less than four services every Sunday and several during the week, plus a televangelical ministry on Sunday nights. More significantly, donations had shown a commensurate increase. Had a number of his parishioners not become disenchanted with both a lifestyle that could only be described as opulent and a more-than-priestly interest in a number of church members’ wives, he might have remained beneath the IRS’s radar indefinitely.

Currently, Lang was anticipating federal indictment of the good bishop for multiple counts of tax evasion, conspiracy to evade taxes, fraud, mail fraud and a laundry list of related offenses. It would seem Lang’s client had not only been dipping his pen into the company inkwell, his fingers had been in the church’s purse as well.

Groom came through the door, hand extended. “Thank you so much for seeing me without an appointment.”

Lang stood to shake hands. “Glad I was available.” He sat behind his desk, indicating one of two leather wing chairs separated by a small French commode. “What can I do for you?”

Groom was tall, over six feet, with a shock of silver hair he constantly swept aside, a gesture Lang had noted he did with dramatic flair at crucial points of his televised sermons. Still standing, he gazed upward. “First, let us pray.”

Lang always felt a little uncomfortable when his client spent a good two or three minutes invoking the Lord’s favor on whatever he happened to be doing at the moment as well as seeking heavenly retribution upon those who were persecuting him. Idly, Lang wondered if a brief prayer had been said preparatory to each seduction of one of his flock. It was certain the time spent communicating with the Almighty was duly noted and added to the time spent in legal counseling to be charged against a very generous retainer.

“Amen,” the bishop said, and sat down.

Lang looked across the desk expectantly.

“I’ve been thinking about this matter of the church vehicles. They say…” The man’s otherwise-angelic face contorted into an expression that looked like he tasted something extremely unpleasant whenever he referred to the prosecution. “They say I misused church funds to buy vehicles. Do you know, Mr. Reilly, that the Cathedral of the Holy Savior uses its vehicles, mostly buses, to bring to God’s house those who otherwise would be unable to attend services?”

Lang suppressed a sigh. He had been here before. “Does that include the Ferrari and the turbo Bentley?”

The bishop hunched his shoulders, a man deeply offended. “Someone in my position needs to display material wealth. Success is a sign of God’s favor, as I constantly preach. We are in very serious trouble, this country of ours, when the Philistines can persecute the faithful because they succeed.”

Another synonym for the prosecution. He was partially correct, though. The government moved with an uncharacteristically light hand when dealing with religious mountebanks, charlatans and others who saw the First Amendment as license to participate in otherwise-illegal activity. It was only when it became clear someone was using a church as a personal bank account to evade taxes, utilizing the mail to solicit funds that clearly went to private uses, or the church and its pastor became indistinguishable that criminal charges were brought.

Lang kept the observation to himself.

“And then there’s the matter of the church’s ownership of homes in the mountains and at the beach. Do you realize how many conferences and retreats the church elders have there every year?”

As far as Lang had been able to ascertain, there were no church elders, deacons or other persons charged with any office that related to financial decisions.

He leaned forward, his elbows on the desk. “Elders?”

“Why yes, of course. You certainly don’t think one person can run an organization the size of the Cathedral of the Holy Savior, do you?”

Lang reached for a pad with one hand and took a pen from a cup filled with them. “Just who are these elders?”

“Well, there’s Jamie Shaw…”

Lang put the pen down. “Your son-in-law.”

And so far, unindicted coconspiritor.

“And Lewis Reid.”

Nephew.

“And, of course, Lois.”

Wife.

Lang leaned back in his chair. “The government will contend since the elders are all family members, you don’t have to meet at million-dollar homes in resort areas. How many times a year do you, personally, use those facilities?”

“A man under as much pressure as I am deserves an occasional long weekend away some place.” He smiled. “Besides, I’ve composed some of my best sermons at the beach.”

“It might be a little better if the beach to which you refer wasn’t at Sag Harbor in Long Island’s Hamptons. That’s pretty high-octane real estate. And it doesn’t help that you arrive there in a private jet.”

“We simply charter the airplane.” Bishop Groom looked offended.

“Actually, if I recall, the church purchased a set number of hours on a Citation for the last four years.”

“Tending to a flock as large as mine requires transportation.”

Lang shook his head slowly. “You have members of your congregation in places other than metro Atlanta?”

“We are always looking to expand the word of the Lord.” The bishop slid forward, sitting on the edge of his chair. “Mr. Reilly, you sound as though you think I’m guilty as charged. That’s not the attitude I want in my defense counsel.”

Lang didn’t think his client was guilty; he knew it. That was not the question. The issue was whether the assistant United States attorney could convince a jury of it beyond a reasonable doubt.

Lang picked up the pen and walked it between his fingers. “Bishop, you didn’t hire me for my opinions, nor did you retain me to prove you innocent. Only not guilty. There’s a huge difference.”

The bishop thought this over for a moment. “Any chance of a deal?”

Lang shrugged. “There’s always a ‘deal.’ Whether you find it acceptable or not is the question. So far you haven’t authorized me to ask. Shall I?”

Groom gave this some thought also. “I’ll pray over it and let you know.” He stood, extending a hand. “I find things come easier to me if I take them to the Lord.”

“Let’s hope this is no exception,” Lang said dryly.

Lang stood at the door between the outer office and the building’s hallway and bank of elevators, watching his client’s departure.

“I hope you checked to make sure you still have your watch on your wrist,” Sara snorted from her desk.

Lang closed the door. “That’s no way to talk about a man who dropped a hundred big on us.”

Sara swiveled in her chair to face her computer monitor. “A million dollars wouldn’t make him any less of a thief, a liar and a. ..” Her expression indicated she was trying to think of an acceptable phrase to describe the man’s sexual exploits. Her strong disapproval of anything not condoned by the Southern Baptist Church restricted both her world-view and vocabulary.

She settled for adulterer.

“He may be all that but he sure had his fun while it lasted.”

Lang didn’t have to look at her to see her bite back a sharp reply.

“I’m about to improve the moral quality of my companions. I’m having lunch with Father Francis.”

As he shut the door to his office, he heard her mutter something like “It’ll do you good!”

Forty minutes later

The Capital City Club is the last remnant of what once was the heart of Atlanta’s business, financial and legal communities before flight farther north abandoned the central city streets to winos, beggars and the rare tourist unfortunate enough to lose their way between the Georgia Aquarium and the Martin Luther King Jr. Historic District. Housed in downtown’s sole remaining private clubhouse, a veranda-fronted, tree-flanked, four-story anachronism, it squats between towering skyscrapers. Even though an epidemic of political correctness has made the club no longer the exclusive domain of white, Anglo-Saxon males, a near-life-size portrait of Robert E. Lee is the first thing a visitor sees upon entering the foyer.

Lang entered the dining room, glanced around and spotted Father Francis Narumba seated at a table with a view of Peachtree Street. A native of one of West Africa’s less desirable countries, the priest had been educated in an American college and seminary and assigned to one of Atlanta’s parishes with a rapidly growing African population. He had been Lang’s sister’s priest after she had inexplicably not only joined the Catholic Church but a congregation where English was a second language. Lang was not particularly religious but he and Francis had become fast friends in the years after her death.

Men in clerical collars were not uncommon guests at the downtown club, but they were more frequently seen exchanging them for golf shirts in the locker rooms of the club’s two courses outside the city limits.

Francis stood, the flash of a white smile splitting his face. “How was Venice? Incudi reddere.”

Francis, like Lang, was a victim of a liberal-arts education. Latin had been an obvious language choice for one planning to enter the priesthood. Lang had no explanation as to why he had chosen the dead tongue. The end result was that the two friends exchanged Latin aphorisms on a regular basis.

“I have indeed returned to the anvil,” Lang said, sitting and shaking out the linen napkin. “To start with, I just had a visit from the Reverend Bishop Groom. You’ve been reading about him in the paper?”

Francis wrinkled his nose as though it detected an open sewer. “I have indeed. The fact he has come to see you tells me he’s in the trouble that he richly deserves… How many of his parishioners claim he seduced them?”

Lang signaled to the waitress. “If seduction were a crime, we would be building high-rise jails instead of condos. It’s the fact he’s using his church as a tax dodge that has the U.S. attorney’s boxer shorts in a wad. Vectigalia nervi sunt rei publicae. ”

Francis took the menu proffered by the waitress. “Cicero was right: taxes are the sinews of the state. But I could forgive chiseling on taxes.”

“You’re in the forgiveness business, remember?”

Francis ignored him. “It’s using the church’s money for vacation homes, fancy cars, that sort of thing.”

“Obviously the Cathedral of the Holy Savior doesn’t require a vow of poverty,” Lang observed pointedly. “Divitiae virum faciunt.”

The waitress was hovering. Both men ordered large shrimp salads.

Francis watched her retreat toward the kitchen. “Riches may make the man, but think of the good that man could do if he shared some of them with people like those guys.” He nodded to the window where two shabbily dressed men were panhandling passersby.

“So they could buy a better brand of wine by the pint?”

Francis’s reply was a snort. “You can be quite difficult, you know.”

“Be thankful this is one of my better days. I can also be impossible.”

Francis shook his head. “OK. Moving past our disagreement on social and economic issues, I repeat: how was Venice?”

“You wouldn’t believe what happened.”

“Try me.”

Lang waited for their salads to be placed in front of them before beginning his adventures.

When he finished speaking, Francis was silent for a moment, thinking. “I read about the theft of the relics from Saint Mark’s in Venice. I should have known if there was trouble within a hundred miles, you’d be involved in it somehow.”

“Dessert, gentlemen? We have some freshly made peppermint ice-cream cake.” The waitress was hovering again.

Lang looked up. “My spiritual advisor here will no doubt take whatever you offer. He gets only bread and water in his monastic cell.”

Francis rolled his eyes. “And you?”

“As a normal human being whose natural aging process has produced a metabolism that manufactures a hundred calories for each one consumed…”

Francis looked up at the bewildered young woman. “He means, no thank you. As for me, yes indeed, I will have the peppermint ice-cream cake. And add a dollop of whipped cream, could you, please?”

A few minutes later, Lang watched Francis dig into a concoction that would have stilled the most demanding sweet tooth. “How is it I bust my ass working out and put on a pound if I even look at sweets and you never gain weight, yet you eat anything that isn’t nailed down? Can you pray off calories?”

“ ‘Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.’ First Psalm. For you heretics, there isn’t a lot of hope.”

Lang sipped a cup of coffee as Francis used the edge of his fork to scrape the last of the confection from his plate. “You can have seconds, y’know.”

Francis looked up, not quite successful in hiding a smile. “I couldn’t do that to you.” He seemed to think a moment. “Back to that excitement in Venice. You know, there’s a good chance what was taken weren’t Saint Mark’s bones at all.”

Lang was debating if the extra caffeine in another cup of coffee would make him jumpy all afternoon. “Really? And whose bones might they be?”

Just then the waitress handed Lang the check for signature and member number. He scribbled both.

Lang gave his friend a look that said he knew his leg was being pulled. “OK, I’ll bite, even if I see another of those ‘who’s buried in Grant’s tomb’ jokes. Who’s buried in Saint Mark’s?”

Francis lifted his arm, checking his watch. “I’d tell you but you’d want an explanation, and I have a meeting with the bishop. Gurt was kind enough to invite me for dinner Friday night. I’ll explain then.”

Both men got up from the table, Francis reaching to shake Lang’s hand. “Thanks for the lunch. I’m a little embarrassed I can’t pick up my share of the tab here.”

Lang grinned. “Why? In all the time we’ve tossed a coin for the check, I don’t recall you ever losing. Sooner or later you will. This way, I’m spared the suspense of guessing when.”

Outside, wind was chasing trash down the sidewalk between canyon walls of glass and steel. Lang had left his overcoat at the office and was glad his walk back to work would be less than a block. Everyone else on the street seemed to share his hurry to get out of the wintry blast.

He stopped long enough to wave as Francis drove out of the parking lot in the parish’s aged Toyota, crossed Peachtree and disappeared down the ridge, the spine of which forms Atlanta’s most famous street. Turning back toward his office, he stopped. Across the street was one pedestrian who was in no hurry. His coat collar turned up concealing most of the face, the man seemed to be staring at Lang. Perhaps suddenly realizing he had been noticed, he hurried into the revolving door of a nearby hotel.

Lang’s first impulse was to follow. He took a couple of steps and stopped. Overactive imagination? Had the stranger been looking at him or simply taking in what meager sights the city had to offer? He looked around, spotting no one who showed any particular interest in him, not even a street bum. Still, ingrained paranoia wouldn’t let go, a paranoia that had saved his life more than once.

Once he was back in his office, Sara was waiting for him with another stack of messages. He soon forgot the man on the street.

Beijing Olympic Tower

267 Beisihuan Zhonglu

Haidian, Beijing

The day before

Less than a week after the end of the 2008 Summer Olympics, the space occupied in the new sixteen-story building by the committee that had organized and operated the games was vacated. The colorful posters and photographs of the athletes that had festooned the walls were replaced by officially sanctioned pictures of the holy trinity of Sun Yat-sen, Mao and Chou En-lai. China’s burgeoning bureaucracy, ever hungry for more room, now filled the building overlooking the Birdcage, the popular name for the unique Olympic stadium.

Not that the view from the fourth floor this afternoon was one that might adorn the cover of a magazine, thought Wan Ng. Beijing’s brownish haze had reduced the landmark to a mere chimera even though it was less than a quarter of a mile distant. A combination of coal-fueled industry, vehicle emissions and lethargic natural circulation rendered Beijing’s air among the most foul on earth. A system of alternating days when the massive number of government employees might drive into the city, a lottery for license plates to restrict the number of vehicles on the roads and a requirement that all autos and trucks must have an “environmentally friendly” sticker to enter past the Fifth Ring Road had done little to ameliorate the air quality. The fact a thriving black market dispensed the stickers to anyone willing to pay was only part of the problem.

Poisonous air was the least of Ng’s concerns this afternoon. The tone of the call he had gotten from Undersecretary Chin Diem summoning him here had lacked the congratulations for a job well done. True, Ng had lost the men assigned to him and had made international news for the chase through the canals of Venice. But he had brought the object of the mission back with him even though its theft had caused a worldwide uproar.

So what?

The men he had left behind could hardly be identified as Chinese nationals. Even if the Italians possessed the technology to compare their features with scans of their American passports, it would be months before the authorities realized the papers were forgeries.

Still, Diem was unhappy for some reason. Not knowing that reason made Ng nervous. One thing was certain: meeting the undersecretary here rather than in Diem’s sumptuous office with a view of Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City beyond, haze permitting, meant there would be no record of either the meeting itself or the subject to be discussed, a rarity in a society where the affairs of the lowest citizen were subject to scrutiny.

Uneasily, Ng watched a procession of three Shuanghuan CEO’s, midsized SUVs, pull up to the building’s entrance below. Four dark-suited men got out of both the leading and trailing vehicles, scanned their surroundings and nodded to the driver of the second car. Crime in Beijing was almost as nonexistent as political dissent. The number of cars in the caravan of a high-level official was more a testimony to his importance and current standing in the governmental hierarchy than his need for security. Should a bureaucrat who had formerly rated three cars appear with a single-car escort, his status was clearly waning. Decline to a lone SUV augured an immediate and involuntary retirement from government service.

Ng could see the portly figure of Diem below as one of the men held the door open. He was carrying a thin attache case.

Ng turned around, facing a double bank of elevators. The one on the far left whispered open and four black suits stepped out, followed by Diem.

The undersecretary glanced around, fixing an expressionless stare on Ng. “Follow me.”

He led the entourage down a short corridor and opened a door at the end. Motioning his men to remain in the hallway, he ushered Ng inside.

Here the walls still bore Olympic posters. A metal desk and chair faced two uncomfortable-looking seats. The office was devoid of the normal photographs of wife and the single child allowed each family, or any other personal effects. Clearly, this office had been borrowed just for this meeting.

Ng was pondering the significance of that fact as Diem rounded the desk, sat and snapped open the attache case. Wordlessly, he motioned Ng to be seated. Reaching into a jacket pocket, he produced a pack of American cigarettes-Marlboros-and then a gold lighter, a knockoff of a world-famous jeweler’s design. He shook out a cigarette and lit it without offering his guest one, not a good sign.

His head circled in blue smoke, he removed a thin folder from the attache case, opened it and began to read. Ng would have bet the undersecretary had the few pages memorized. It was a common tactic among the Party’s elite. The theatrics enforced the fact the subordinate did not rate the time it would take for his superior to read the file in advance.

From somewhere behind the desk, Diem produced an exceptionally ugly porcelain ashtray and set his smoldering cigarette down. “How did the Americans know you were in the church?”

Ng felt his throat go dry. The implicit accusation could be career ending. In fact, if he was even suspected of revealing his mission, prison or worse was likely.

“I do not believe they did, Comrade Secretary.”

The use of the honorific, though passe, showed respect.

“Explain.”

“Had they known my men and I were in the church, I doubt they would have entered so obviously. They made no effort to conceal themselves.”

Diem picked up the cigarette, took a puff and returned it to the ashtray. “Do you not find it coincidental that two members of American intelligence would just happen by late at night when the church would ordinarily be closed?”

“Do we know they were American intelligence?”

Diem snorted, smoke erupting from his nose. “The woman obviously had military training, did she not? And if she had the capability to not only defeat but kill one of your armed men, we must assume her companion did also.”

“Comrade Secretary, my subsequent investigation of the credit-card records shows the man, Langford Reilly, is some sort of lawyer living in the southern United States.”

“An intelligence operative would have such cover, would he not?”

Ng had no answer.

The undersecretary was studying the short stack of papers in front of him. “Intelligence or not, the man and woman could well have seen the faces of you and your men. They could have told the police the men robbing the church were Chinese.”

“The interior of the church was too dark to see faces.”

Diem was reading from the file again. “You are Yi, are you not, from a small village in Yunnan?”

Ng hoped his face didn’t show what he felt. It was no surprise his background had been duly recorded. A file existed on every person born in China, one of the reasons for the bloated civil service. There would be a more detailed dossier for those considered to be in sensitive positions. His uneasiness came from the mention of the fact he was a member of one of China’s fifty-five ethnic minorities, people the government viewed with xenophobic suspicion.

Ng recalled his childhood in the tiny village: the walled, plank house with a sod roof held on by stones shared with his parents, his grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. As well as a number of livestock far too valuable to be left out in the elements. Neither the Great Leap Forward nor any other proclaimed program of rural modernization had reached the place. The last time he had visited, there still was no electricity or running water. It had taken hard work from sunup till dark to wrest a living from the stony soil of each family’s single small field allotted by the local commissar. Army life had been luxurious by comparison. He felt nostalgia for the place along with a strong desire to never have to live there again, a real possibility if he failed to follow whatever agenda the undersecretary had in mind.

Diem continued. “Major, People’s Liberation Army, transferred to Special Branch, Department of International Affairs three years ago, commendation for successful completion of unspecified mission eight months ago…”

Again Ng kept quiet.

Diem’s eyes flicked over the top of the file. “And I see you graduated from the American Academy.”

“That is all correct, Comrade Secretary.”

Diem nodded as though an issue had been resolved. “Yes, of course. Do you feel comfortable operating in America?”

“I have been so trained, Comrade Secretary, as you have just noted.”

The secretary paused long enough to put out his cigarette with an exaggerated stabbing motion. “Good. You are to choose such men as you think best fitted and travel to the United States, where you will observe this Reilly person and the woman. If you are convinced they have no connection with an American intelligence organization, you are to so inform me.” He held Ng’s gaze. “You will be certain before you make such a decision.”

“And if they are?”

Diem leaned across the desk. “If such is the case, we may be assured they have passed along the fact that the People’s Republic may have been involved in the Venice affair and change policy accordingly.”

“And if not?”

The undersecretary shrugged; it was a matter of no consequence. “Either way, what they might have seen presents a future risk. Eliminate them.”

472 Lafayette Drive, Atlanta

19:42 the next evening

Lang Reilly was sprawled into his favorite chair in the house’s paneled library/den, a Waterford crystal tumbler containing the remnants of a scotch and water on a leather-inlaid desk beside him. The flames danced across shelves of polished spines of leather-bound books Lang had collected and read. Works of Scott, Burns’s poetry.. . All were in English, not the Danish or Swedish popular for decorative purposes sold in antique stores. From the sound system, John Denver was extolling a Rocky Mountain high. The singer, dead these many years, had been a favorite of Dawn’s and a voice Lang associated with a particularly happy part of his earlier life. The music was more nostalgia than entertainment.

He was watching his six-year-old son, Manfred, seated on the muted Kerman rug in front of a fire crackling behind a brass screen. Opposite the boy, Francis sat splay legged, holding a deck of oversized cards. The priest dealt slowly, faceup, one on top of the one before. At the appearance of a jack, both attempted to be the first to slap an open palm on it as it hit the floor, thereby claiming not only the knave but the stack of cards beneath.

The disproportionate size of the piles accumulated by the competitors was attributable to Francis’s reluctance to slap the jack with full force for fear of hurting Manfred, plus the fact the latter’s shorter arms and unrestrained enthusiasm gave him a distinct advantage. Curled up touching Manfred, Grumps, the family’s dog of undetermined age and breed, opened an eye, either the blue one or the brown one, annoyed at each shriek his young master gave as he claimed another jack.

Lang stood up, crossed the room and stood at the built-in bar. “One more scotch before dinner?”

Francis looked up, card in midair. “No thanks. I’m afraid it’ll dull my competitive edge.”

Lang helped himself before nodding toward the relatively small stack of cards the priest had won. “What competitive edge?”

John Denver was imploring the country roads of West Virginia to take him home.

“Abendessen! ” Gurt was standing in the doorway to announce dinner. When possible, she and Lang spoke German around their son in hopes of preserving his bilingual abilities.

“Aw, Mom,” Manfred protested in words and tone familiar to any American six-year-old’s parents. “I was beating the socks off Uncle Fancy…”

Francis slowly got up. “And I expect you will after dinner, too.”

Gurt shook her head at her son. “I will bet you did not whine so at coming to dinner while you were staying with Mr. and Mrs. Charles while your father and I were gone.”

She referred to their next-door neighbors, who had a son slightly less than two years Manfred’s junior. Even though the difference between four and six is large at their ages, the two boys had been fast friends since Lang and Gurt’s participation in rescuing the younger from kidnappers the year before. The Charleses, Wynton and Paige, were more than eager to babysit as a small return for Lang and Gurt’s efforts, a return both Lang and Gurt insisted was not due.

“But Mom,” Manfred said innocently, “Mrs. Charles is an awesome cook.”

Lang tousled his son’s hair, speaking English for Francis’s benefit. “Meaning from what I heard that you and Wynn Three had a steady diet of hot dogs, hamburgers and peanut butter.”

“And the best apple pie in the world!”

Smiling, Gurt led her son to his seat in the dining room. “Auf Wiedersehen apple pie and peanut butter; wie geht’s roast chicken and vegetables?”

Having outgrown his high chair, Manfred climbed up on top of two sofa cushions that got his head and shoulders above table level.

Sitting, Lang turned to Francis. “OK, padre, see if you can finish saying grace before dinner gets cold.”

When Francis had completed an admirably brief blessing, Manfred piped up. “Why does Uncle Fancy always do that, thank God for the food, when Mommy buys it at the store herself?”

Francis gave Lang an amused look. “Your son’s spiritual education seems to be somewhat lacking.”

Gurt and Lang exchanged glances before Lang looked back at Francis. “You said the blessing; you explain.”

Francis cleared his throat. “Well, we thank God that your mother has the ability, the money, to buy…”

The phone rang.

Family custom decreed a ringing phone be ignored during dinner. If the call was important, there would be a message. If unimportant, why bother to answer in the first place?

This time, though, Lang wiped his mouth with a napkin and stood. “Excuse me. The federal grand jury was meeting this afternoon, and the indictment of the Reverend Bishop Groom was one of the things they were considering.”

“I thought grand-jury proceedings were secret,” Francis observed.

Lang was headed back to the den and the ringing phone. “They are. That’s why I need to take this. My source isn’t free to call at just any time.”

Lang noticed it the second he put the phone to his ear, a faint hum that had not been on the line when he used the telephone earlier that evening. “Hello?”

Silence.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Dean?” a man’s voice responded. “Is this David Dean?”

The humming seemed to waver like an echo with each word.

“Just a moment,” Lang replied evenly.

Leaving the cordless receiver off its base, he went to the two windows closest to the street. The curtains were already pulled for the night. Reaching up behind the heavy drapes, Lang grasped a handle. He pulled, lowering a metal sheet. He repeated the process at the other window.

When he returned to the phone, the caller had gone. So had the hum.

As he returned to the table, Gurt studied his face. “Who was that, a wrong number?”

Lang shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Then, who…?”

Lang’s expression said he clearly didn’t intend to discuss it in front of Manfred or Francis.

Thirty minutes later, the two men were back in the den. Now, with thudding guitars, the more-recently deceased baritone voice of Johnny Cash was lamenting his confinement in Folsom Prison. Francis was watching as Lang carefully decanted a bottle of twenty-five-year-old vintage Graham’s port.

“What makes a certain year ‘vintage’?” Francis asked.

Lang’s eyes were on the remains of crumbled cork collecting in the silver port filter along with the residue, or “mud,” of crushed fruit with which the distilled wine had been fortified before being stored in oak barrels. “A vintage year is when one vineyard declares it. That’s why the year of this Graham’s, say, might not be declared a vintage by another house, say, Sandeman’s, Cockburne’s or Fonseca.”

“What’s to stop a port manufacturer from declaring every year a vintage? I mean, the price of a vintage is double or triple that of a late-vintage ruby or other port.”

Lang placed the full decanter on the bar. “Nothing except the fact that if a house puts out an inferior year’s product as vintage, it won’t keep its customers long.” He filled a small crystal glass, holding it to the light to admire its ruby color. “You might say the free market keeps the port makers honest.”

Lang handed the glass to Francis, who took a tentative sip. “As always, delicious!”

Lang poured and sampled a glass of his own. “You’re right, it is good but…”

“But what?”

Lang looked longingly at the coffee table where a mahogany humidor sat. “It would be better with a good cubano.”

Francis shook his head slowly as he sat on the sofa. “Don’t even think about going back on your word.”

When Manfred arrived in Atlanta, Gurt and Lang had made promises to each other concerning the child’s health. Not wanting to set a bad example or subject the little boy to potentially harmful secondhand smoke, they agreed they would not smoke in front of him. That proved difficult for Gurt, leading to clandestine Marlboros smoked in the yard, the odor of which was clearly detectable upon her return inside. Lang, a lover of Cuban cigars, which he had ordered specially by an indirect route, only consumed one or two a week anyway. It had been easier for him to smoke less although more difficult to conceal, since he refused to throw away a cigar only half-smoked. The things cost nearly twenty-five bucks apiece. The ultimate resolution had been for both parents to simply quit-if there was anything simple about giving up a lifetime pleasure.

“What word was that?” Gurt had returned from her turn to bathe Manfred and put him to bed.

“Our mutual smoking ban.”

She looked at her husband with mock suspicion. “A year into an agreement and you are already looking for hoop holes?” She shrugged. “It is not easy, being married to a lawyer, always the hoop holes.”

“Loopholes,” Lang corrected.

“Is one hole in an agreement not as good as another?”

For an answer, Lang poured a third glass of port and extended it to her. “At least we didn’t give up port.”

She accepted the offering with a mock curtsy. “For small favors I am thankful.”

Johnny Cash bewailed being named Sue.

Francis smiled. “Always found that song amusing. What I don’t understand, though, is your choice of music.”

“I suppose you would prefer Gregorian chants?”

“Not necessarily. What I meant was, you obviously enjoy history.” Francis pointed to the overburdened bookcases. “I see everything from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall to Will Durant’s Story of Civilization and Churchill’s Second World War. I see works by Dickens, essays by Emerson and a bunch of contemporary novels.”

“And?”

“I don’t get it: someone as obviously well-read as you likes country music?”

Lang nodded. “Yeah, I do. At least some of it. I can understand the words and it actually has a tune I can whistle. Try whistling Beethoven.”

An hour or so later, the port exhausted, Francis stood and stretched. “As always, a magnificent dinner, wonderful port and delightful company.”

Lang also stood. “You are easily amused.”

Francis sighed. “Not as easily as you think. It’s been a long time since you broke bread at the parish house.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Mrs. Finnigan, my housekeeper-cook, bless her heart, is a fine woman and a good Catholic but a horrible cook. Deorum cibus non est. Food for the gods it ain’t.”

“Doesn’t sound like a fair trade-off to me,” Lang said, walking his friend to the front door. “Why not get someone who is a decent cook, then?”

Francis stopped, facing Lang. “She’s been at Immaculate Conception longer than I have. I can’t just fire her like that.”

Lang reached to open the door. “Maybe you’ll be canonized someday for your martyrdom in suffering heartburn as the price of Christian charity.”

Francis stepped around Lang to give Gurt a hug. “In addition to being a heretic, your husband is a wiseass.”

Gurt hugged him back. “Be grateful you do not have to live with him.”

“I include thanks in my daily prayers.”

They watched him pull the Toyota into the street. In following it with his eyes, Lang noticed a sedan parked at the curb to his left. The people who lived there had an ample yard in which to park cars, so the automobile was not a visitor’s nor was it one he recognized as his neighbor’s. For that matter, the humble Ford was not the type transportation preferred by the residents of affluent Ansley Park.

Its sheer ordinariness stuck out like an automotive sore thumb.

Lang took a little more time closing the door than was necessary. He thought he saw a flash of movement. Someone was in the car.

Why?

Lang thought he had a good idea.

It was then he realized he had forgotten to ask Francis about his cryptic remark at lunch the other day concerning the true occupant of Saint Mark’s tomb under the altar in Venice. Oh well, he saw the priest on a regular if purely social basis. He’d get an answer the next time.

Upstairs, Lang cut off the bathroom light and was approaching the bed where Gurt was an indistinct pile of covers.

“Who was it on the phone?” she asked as he pulled back the covers to climb in.

“Someone who wanted me to think they had a wrong number.”

“Why would someone want to do that?”

“There was a hum on the line.”

The blankets fell away as Gurt sat up. “A parabolic listening device? That could make wireless electronics like a cordless telephone hum. Someone with the thing trained on the windows to pick up the vibrations of the glass caused by the human voice. It can also pick up both sides of a telephone conversation. They were testing it.”

“That’s why I pulled down our custom-made privacy shields before I got in bed.”

In remodeling the old Ansley Park home, Gurt and Lang had spared no expense to retain its early twentieth-century charm while modernizing a number of features. One of these additions had been a security system that would shock their more conventional neighbors, and one many military bases might envy.

With the past they shared, neither wanted to risk a former enemy’s reappearance. The house contained a complete privacy system designed to thwart the most sophisticated listening devices, in addition to a number of other surprises, such as oak bolted to two-inch case-hardened steel for doors, a central control system that could remotely seal off any part of the house and real-time surveillance cameras.

Gurt turned on the light by her side of the bed. “They called to make sure their device was operational.”

“Not as good as tapping the phone but not as risky, either. And they can follow conversations anywhere within a hundred yards just by focusing the antenna.”

“But why would someone want to…?”

“To enjoy my brilliant wit?”

Gurt’s frown showed that at the moment, she wasn’t enjoying it at all. “What should we do?”

“Not much. Far as I know, there’s no law against eavesdropping as long as no wiretap or trespass is involved. I’d say someone is more interested in learning about us than doing us harm.”

Gurt nodded. “For now.”

“For now.” Lang turned to open the top drawer of the bedside table and verify his Browning HP 9 mm was where he kept it. “At some point they-whoever ‘they’ might be-are going to either find out whatever they want to know or give up. Then they’ll either go away or move to the next step.”

Gurt was crawling out from under the covers.

“Where are you going?” Lang asked.

“Downstairs to make sure all the locks are on and so are the motion and impact detectors.”

“Don’t forget the motion-activated cameras.”

Lang knew the house was as secure as modern technology could make it. He still had a hard time getting to sleep.

From the diary of Louis Etienne Saint Denis, secretary to Major General Napoleon Bonaparte Chateau Malmaison

September 22, 1799 The general will not see his wife. We arrived in Toulon ^ 1 from Egypt near a week past and hastened to Paris and then to this small palace nearly in the shadow of the grandeur that was Versailles before it was sacked by the mob. It is the news received in Egypt that lent wings to our heels, the open secret of the many affairs of the general’s wife, known to all but, it would seem, the general himself. Had not General Junot told him, all would be well . ^ 2 Now, he sulks in the upstairs of this petite palace, which he provided for Josephine, ^ 3 not allowing her to his bed despite the most piteous wailing and tears. The general married this woman but three years past and it has appeared to all close to him the marriage has been unsatisfactory from the start. The widow of an aristocrat who fell victim to the guillotine, she escaped the same fate only by the overthrow of Robespierre. ^ 4 She is the daughter of a plantation owner in the West Indies ^ 5 impoverished by a hurricane. Older than the general by several years, she is far from beautiful but has a charm and grace that, according to gossip, have enslaved many of her lovers. From the beginning, she treated the general with scorn, while he adored her. Now things are upside down, she begging forgiveness while he ignores her. I can do nothing to improve his dark state and have quit trying lest I draw his ire. Even remarking that we will not miss Egypt’s searing heat brought forth nothing more than a glare. Other than meeting daily with his staff and walks in the small garden , ^ 6 the general keeps to himself, reading and dictating letters to me. He has become fascinated by the history of Alexander the Great. Only this morning, he commented to me that a great battle ^ 7 had been fought along the Nile for possession of Alexander’s body, for it had been prophesied that the nation that possessed the remains of the god-king would never be defeated. ^ 8 Though he does not say, he believes himself to be a second Alexander, his conquests in Europe rather than the East. The only constant in the general’s life is the mysterious box he brought from Egypt. It is never out of his sight.

Law offices of Langford Reilly

The next day

Gurt was the only person who regularly called Lang on his cell phone while he was at work and then only if she had reason to short-circuit Sara’s phone-answering duties. So why was she doing it now?

Lang pushed back from his desk, where he had been proofreading a motion to be filed the next day, dragged the cell from a pocket and pressed “start.”

“Yes ma’am?”

“Lang, there is someone in our house.”

It took a second for her meaning to register. She wasn’t referring to Allard, the man who did twice-a-week cleaning, and he couldn’t recall anyone else who had a key. “You mean, like a burglar? In broad daylight?”

Her voice was perfectly calm, the way it always was when she was facing danger. “I took Manfred to kindergarten, went to the grocery store, came home and the red light was blinking.”

Another of the home’s security features was a series of perimeter sensors that illuminated small warning lights discreetly placed beside front and rear doors.

“Any sign of entry? Our locks aren’t the kind that can easily be forced.”

“Whoever is inside the house had to have special equipment. The locks on both doors are intact and I can see no broken windows. Shall I call the police?”

Response time for Atlanta’s emergency services had been the subject of TV and newspaper articles after several houses had burned to the ground and one or two home invasions had taken place between notifying 911 responders and arrival of the police. Callers had an equal chance of being put on hold or having the emergency crews sent to the wrong addresses. The director of the service blamed budget cuts. Most citizens realistically blamed stupidity and the city’s civil-service system, which made death almost the only cause to terminate inept employees.

“Whoever’s in there isn’t going anywhere and he might be armed. I take it you’re not.”

“I do not carry weapons to drive Manfred to kindergarten, no.”

“Call 911. I’m on my way.”

Less than twenty minutes later, Lang parked in front of his home. It must have been a slow day at the 911 number. Already, the driveway was filled with police cruisers, lights flashing and the street filled with curious neighbors. A van bearing the logo ATLANTA POLICE S.W.A.T. TEAM was disgorging a number of figures in paramilitary dress carrying M16 rifles, who were running toward the uniformed officers already surrounding the house. Lang climbed out of his Porsche just as a tall black man in a suit exited an unmarked but obviously official car.

“Well, Mr. Reilly! I shoulda knowed this be your house, the place where there always some kinda trouble.”

Lang smiled. “Good to see you again, too, Detective Morse.”

Morse shook his head as he followed Lang up the path to the front door. “Reckon I should be thankful you called us, someone in your house, instead of you bagging him yourself like usual.”

Lang didn’t break stride. “Be fair, Detective. The only times you’ve arrived after someone got hurt was when I had to defend myself.”

Morse shook his head. “Still a mess. Between somebody taking a walk off your twenty-fourth-story balcony at your condo, blowing up your car, killing a professor down to Georgia Tech, you just plain trouble. Not to mention your condo exploding.”

Lang spied Gurt in conversation with a man who appeared to be the leader of the SWAT Team. “At least it’s never dull, Detective.”

“Maybe ain’t dull but sure gonna make retirement enjoyable.”

Gurt recognized Morse and turned from the other man. “Ah, Detective! So glad you could come!”

“Ain’t by choice, ma’am, tell you that.” His eyes focused on a small blinking red light under the mailbox. “That gizmo there what tell you somebody inside? Hate to think we got all these folks and hardware out here ’cause of a false alarm,” he added dubiously.

“I made sure…,” she began.

Reaching past her and the detective, Lang flipped open the mailbox beside the door and pushed a small button. The back of a very ordinary looking postal receptacle fell away, revealing a small TV screen. The picture was black-and-white. It showed a figure pacing up and down a room, a gun in his hand.

“Our foyer,” Lang explained. “You can see there’s someone there.”

Morse’s eyes widened. “So we seeing a burglary in real time? But why ain’t he trying to get away? He gotta have heard the sirens.”

“He can’t. The minute he stepped into the room, activating the security system, steel screens dropped down from the ceiling, trapping him in the foyer. Same thing would have happened if he had broken in anywhere else.”

Morse gave Lang the expression of a man who thinks he may be the butt of a joke. “Get outta here!”

“If you liked that, you’re gonna love this.”

Lang pushed another button and a panel next to the video mailbox popped open, revealing what looked like a small speaker. Those standing close by could hear the footsteps of the man inside.

“Voice activated,” Lang explained as he leaned forward. “You, in the house!”

The figure on the screen froze for a second before turning around, looking for the source of the voice.

“You! You’ve got exactly ten seconds to drop your weapon, lie down of the floor and put your hands on your head. Now, nine seconds before we shoot in the cyanide gas.”

The man seemed paralyzed.

“Seven seconds or you’ll be dead in less than thirty.”

That got his attention. He did as ordered.

“Now what?” Morse asked.

Lang produced a key and opened the door, standing back to let the SWAT team enter. Its leader glanced nervously at Lang.

“The gas was a bluff.”

Morse watched the men enter, cuff the intruder and drag him to his feet before speaking. “Who the hell’s the architect for your house, Mr. Reilly, James Bond?”

Lang chose to laugh rather than explain how many close calls he had had in the last few years. Morse was aware of a number of them.

Conversation stopped as the SWAT members dragged the invader toward the open doors of a van.

“Caught in the act- in flagrante delicto, as you lawyers say,” the detective observed. “Even the Fulton County DA should be able to get a conviction if the sheriff can hold on to him.”

He referred to the fact that the current county prosecutor’s office chronically saw criminals go free for reasons of failure to timely prosecute, misplaced evidence and general incompetence. In the last year, several high-profile suspects had walked out of the county’s jail by simply giving a false name to sheriff’s deputies. In Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia, the wheels of justice did not just grind slowly, they frequently ran with stripped gears.

Lang was more interested in the man being shoved into the back of the paddy wagon. “Detective, when was the last time you busted an Asian like that guy?”

Morse looked at him suspiciously. “You asking on behalf of the ACLU or somebody?”

Lang shook his head. “Not at all. Just asking because I’m curious.”

The detective rubbed his chin. “Dunno. Most them Asians around here too busy working for a living to do something like break in a house. Now, out to DeKalb County, they got theyselves a problem with some Asian gangs, but here, they run their businesses an’ what all.” He grinned. “Don’ know if you notice, but ever’ year the paper runs pictures of the top graduate of ever’ city high school. Most of ’em are Asian kids. Kids who finish top of their class ain’t got time for gangs, crime or anything else.”

The detective watched the van drive away with its prisoner. “That perp, Vietnamese or whatever, didn’t do his homework before he tried to break in here. Just random luck, his bad luck he chose your place.” He turned to face the house’s open door, where several uniforms were watching Gurt demonstrate how the steel curtains worked. “Fact is, he’d a known who you were and the sorry-ass history of people trying to fuck with you, he would’ve chosen another house, that’s for sure.”

“I appreciate your confidence.”

But Lang felt anything but confident the break-in was random.

472 Lafayette Drive, Atlanta

That evening

Lang had finished putting his freshly bathed son to bed despite the little’s boy’s every effort to negotiate a few more minutes. Lights out, Grumps already snoring gently on the hooked rug, Manfred now breathing deeply. Lang stood at the door, observing the scene limned by the hall light. He was perpetually both astonished at and grateful for the domestic turn his life had taken in the last two years.

After Dawn’s death, Lang had reconciled himself to a life without the children he had wanted so badly. His resignation to an existence alone had deepened when his sister Janet and her adopted son had perished in a bomb blast in Paris, what, five years ago? To his mind, Gurt’s unexpected reappearance with a son he didn’t know he had was nothing short of miraculous.

Now, if only he could shake off the troubles that seemed to follow him like stray dogs, he could settle down to a life of pleasantly dull domesticity. His existence would be as close to perfect as he could wish.

Or as I think I might wish, he added as he flipped off the hall switch and started down the stairs. Running a charitable foundation was, at the best of times, a source of little excitement. The practice of law, even dealing with characters like the Reverend Bishop Groom, was at its most rewarding repetitive, and constant repetition soon equaled ennui and boredom. Job satisfaction among those of Lang’s peers who had the keenest of minds took a definite downward turn after ten to fifteen years of doing basically the same thing over and over, whether it be in the boardroom, the closing room or the courtroom.

OK, he conceded in the ongoing self-debate, what is it you want: a fabric of life into which is woven the occasional bright hue of action, a stew, bland other than the odd piquant morsel? Most of his contemporaries accepted the colorless existence, the tasteless portion.

Not that he had a choice, he realized. Interrupting grave robbers in Venice, the chase through the canals, just happened. Like getting drenched by an unpredictable summer thunder shower, he and Gurt had just chanced to be there by some random process, call it luck, fate, karma or whatever. Now, for reasons he didn’t understand, his home was under surveillance and had been invaded.

His guess was that the intruder had seen Gurt leave and had anticipated the house would be empty, carrying a weapon only against the possibility of her returning earlier than expected. He had little doubt the job had been thoroughly reconnoitered. But to what end? Hardly some dopehead, desperate to rip off a flat-screen TV to exchange for a few flakes of crystal meth. Even if the law did not recognize a causal relationship because of the mere proximity of events in time, common sense did. What had happened in Venice had precipitated the break-in; he was sure of it.

But why?

The doorbell chimed as he reached the bottom step. He saw Gurt squinting through the peephole before she opened the door. He was surprised to see Detective Morse cross the threshold.

The policeman nodded to Gurt. “Evening, ma’am. Sorry to bother you.”

Lang grinned inwardly. As usual when the detective wasn’t on duty or around the other cops, the deep Southern-black accent dropped away like a discarded garment. Lang supposed the dialect was a device to disarm suspects, to conceal a sharp mind and a quick sense of observation.

“Well, Detective,” Lang said, “this is a surprise. I don’t recall a visit from you that wasn’t in response to some sort of mayhem.”

Morse was looking around curiously. “Tell me about it! This isn’t a social call, though.”

“Well, you’re welcomed nonetheless.” Lang gestured. “Come on back into the den. Can I get you something, perhaps an adult beverage?”

“Thanks but I won’t be staying that long. I’ve got a couple of questions, though.”

Lang led him from the foyer, past dining and living rooms and into the den. “I’d be surprised if you didn’t.” He went to the bar and poured himself a shot of scotch. “Sure you won’t join me?”

Gurt sat on the sofa and motioned the policeman into a chair across a glass coffee table. “Perhaps a Coke?”

Morse shook his head. “Mighty kind of you, but no thanks.” Reaching into a pocket, he produced a small notepad. “Don’t suppose either of you have ever seen the perp that was in your house?”

Both Lang and Gurt shook their heads no.

“Should we have?” Lang asked, adding ice and water to the glass.

The detective gave him a long look, the stare of someone who thinks he is perhaps not hearing the entire truth. “The question you asked me, the one about Asian criminals. Almost like you weren’t surprised at being burglarized by someone other than some homey looking for something to fence in a hurry.”

For not the first time, Lang realized the man’s perceptiveness was usually hidden behind his speech. He said nothing as he sat on the sofa next to Gurt.

“The guy’s Chinese, best we can tell. Least he seemed to understand one of our guys who speaks Mandarin, though he wouldn’t respond to it. And a pro, like he’s been in a police station once or twice, I’d guess, and I don’t mean to contribute to the Policemen’s Benevolent Association, either. No ID on him. A real hard nut. Only words he’s spoken since he was busted has been to ask for a lawyer, fellow named Wan who practices in DeKalb County. Mostly defends gang members. Why do I think to you all this isn’t news?”

Lang shrugged. “Detective, I can assure you, we were not expecting to be burglarized, not by a Chinese or, for that matter, a Frenchman or Sherpa.”

Morse gazed around the room. “For someone got his house secure as Fort Knox, you weren’t exactly expecting Girl Scouts selling cookies, either.”

“Last time I looked, Detective, a man’s house is his castle. He’s free to use any security measure he chooses unless it’s illegal like a spring gun or something else that potentially could injure emergency personnel.”

Morse gave him another long look. “You’re right, counselor. But you can understand why I might be curious as to the, er, rather elaborate precautions. I mean, what other house you know got steel curtains drop down from the ceiling, cameras and an intercom? And I’m far from certain the cyanide gas was just a bluff.”

Lang sat back, crossing his arms. “You know I seem to draw trouble, Detective.”

“Like sugar draws ants.”

“Now that I have a family, it seemed only reasonable to take certain… precautions.”

“OK, conceding that you’re just a cautious man, why would some Chinese guy be interested in your house?”

Lang rattled the ice cubes in his glass and took a sip. “Until you told me the man’s nationality-or should I say ethnicity-he could have been any number of people of Asian descent.”

Morse stood, stuffing the notepad in a jacket pocket. “See if I got this right: you had no reason whatsoever to think you’d be burglarized, and even less by a Chinese.”

Lang stood. “You got it.”

The detective glanced upward, perhaps checking this room for cameras also. “These real-time TV cameras that showed the perp in your foyer. I don’t suppose they make a tape, too.”

Lang shook his head. “No need. The purpose is to be able to see an intruder, not produce evidence.”

“You sure about that?”

“Very.”

Morse’s eyes narrowed. “Let me be very clear, Mr. Reilly. You hiding something pertinent to my investigation, I won’t hesitate to charge you with interfering with an investigation, obstruction, spitting on the street, parking overtime or whatever.”

Lang smiled disarmingly. “So you’ve told me.”

Morse pointed an accusing finger. “Ever’ time, there’s something I feel you aren’t telling me. This time…”

Lang crossed to the doorway between the hall and den, his good humor undiminished, a clear indication the conversation was at an end. “Thanks for stopping by, Detective. Anytime.”

Between drawn curtains Lang and Gurt watched Morse climb into his car and depart.

“You had a reason to tell him not about Venice and to lie about the tape?” she asked as the car’s taillights disappeared around a turn.

Lang let the drapes fall back into place. “What good would it have done? We can’t establish the break-in was related to Venice. As for the tape, I didn’t lie. The camera records on a disk on a twenty-four-hour cycle. If I’d told him one existed, he’d demand we hand it over. As it is, I’ve got a much better use for it. In fact, I’ll remove it now.”

“To do what?”

“See if some of our former friends can identify our visitor.”

Gurt turned to go back into the den. “What do we do now? The next time may be more than a burglary.”

“Perhaps. The listening device, the surveillance, even the break-in when you weren’t at home, tells me someone is after information.”

“But what, who?”

“That is precisely what I’m going to try to find out.”

Lang went to a broom closet in the kitchen. Behind brooms, mops and a vacuum cleaner he had every intention of repairing someday was a small metal door resembling a box housing circuit breakers. Inside were a slot and a button. Pressing the latter caused a shiny silver disk to eject.

Lang took the disk into his office, a cramped space under the stairs that was a former closet, large enough only for a small table that served as a desk with a telephone, lamp and computer screen and keyboard on it, a single chair and two-drawer file cabinet. He shut the door. That made the specially insulated space both claustrophobic and immune to listening devices. Sitting at the table, he reached into the file cabinet, his fingers marching across file folders until he found the one he wanted. Extracting it, he flipped it open and ran his eyes down a sheet of paper until he came to a phone number prefaced by the Washington, D.C., area code, 202.

He pulled his BlackBerry from his pocket, remembered that the device was basically like a radio, subject to interception by anyone who had the right frequency. He reached for the phone on the table and keyed in the number. He knew the person he was calling could be, and likely was, anywhere in the world other than the District of Columbia. The number was connected to a series of electronic switchbacks and cutouts that made it impossible to trace without some very sophisticated computers.

The ringing stopped and a brief tone beeped.

“Miles, ole buddy, Lang here. I could use your help. Give me a call. Thanks.”

Lang hung up.

By the time Lang had gone back to the den to refresh his scotch, his office phone rang.

He picked up on the third ring. “Miles?”

There was a half-second pause, confirmation the call was being relayed, but the softness of a Southern voice was unimpaired. “It’s me, Lang. I’m here with my endless wisdom and bountiful wit to be of service.”

Lang grinned. Miles Berkly, scion of one of Alabama’s wealthiest families, prepped at Groton-or was it St. Paul’s?-and then on to Princeton. Educated, cultured and totally without false modesty. He wore suits that would have cost a month’s pay had he purchased them on his salary. He had been Lang’s best friend at the Agency. Fortunately for Lang, a combination of political connections and a brilliant record had saved Miles from the post-Cold War cuts. From time to time Lang had needed favors that would have been unavailable to someone without access to the Agency’s resources.

“I need a favor.”

A theatrical sigh. “And I had hoped you were calling to tell me Gurt had regained her senses and left you, that she was available again. She hot as ever?”

“Eat your heart out, Miles. I’ve got a bit of a problem I hope you can help me with.”

“That’s me. Good deed a day.”

Lang picked up the disk. “I’ve got a disk with a running sequence of a man who broke into our house. I’d like to e-mail it to you and have you run it through the Agency’s face-recognition program.”

A dry chuckle. “You need to talk to the Fibbies. They’re the ones who keep files on your average American burglars, robbers, congressmen and other members of the criminal element.”

“I think this guy is more than that.”

“Divine inspiration or you have something to base that on?”

Lang turned the disk over in his hand. “If you have the time, I’ll tell you the whole story.”

“No need. I’ll take your word for it. You know that specific technology isn’t exactly open to the public. I could get in deep shit for using it for a non-Agency purpose.”

“That mean you can’t do it?”

“No, it means you owe me big time. Here’s the e-mail address.. .”

Petionville, Port-au-Prince, Haiti

The next evening

The restaurant was deserted. White-linen-topped tables surrounded a pool like mounds of snow around a mountain lake. Plates were in place, silverware arranged as though for some ghostly banquet. The evening’s gentle breeze ruffled the surface of the blue water to the cadence of the songs of tree frogs. It was hard to believe that only a few miles away, all downhill, the city was a muggy cesspool with nighttime temperatures in the high eighties and no movement of the torpid air.

Undersecretary Chin Diem knew: he had exited the private jet and broken into a sweat before he reached the bottom of the staircase and the air-conditioned Mercedes. He had been surprised when the car delivered him not to the presidential palace but to this place-Bistro La Lantern, according to the sign in front. His questions had brought uncomprehending stares from the driver and the other man in the front seat. At least he thought they were staring. It was hard to tell, when both wore reflective sunglasses that concealed the upper part of their faces.

Diem distrusted people who wore sunglasses at night like American movie stars.

Distrust or not, though, here he was beside a pool, looking at the city below without any idea why. All he knew was that he had received an urgent note from Haiti’s ambassador to the People’s Republic demanding in most undiplomatic language his immediate return to Haiti. Perhaps the president for life had yet another demand. He sighed.

Something streaked the surface of the water like a fish striking prey. But there were no fish. He could see the bottom of the pool and there was nothing in there but water. He was still puzzling over the occurrence when it happened again.

The wind?

No.

Quite impossible. He had felt no sudden gust that would slash the surface as though something had been ripped through it. For reasons he could not have explained, he looked over his shoulder, seeing no one but the two men who had brought him here.

He shivered but not from the warm breeze. He hated this place. Not only the sewer that was Port-au-Prince, but this largely barren area, stripped of the lush vegetation indigenous to these latitudes. The constant sound of drums at night, the voodoo of natives who worshipped gods, loa, that were an equal mixture of Christian saints and African spirits, gave him the creeps even though he had been reared to believe in no power higher than the state.

The water’s surface parted again, this time with an audible ripple.

Diem stood just in time to see a tiny shape, all but indistinguishable against the night, as it flitted away. A bat! The little creature was drinking from the pool in midflight. Diem gritted his teeth. He hated rodents, winged or otherwise.

His revulsion was quickly forgotten at the sound of footsteps. Another man behind mirrored sunglasses, this one perhaps the supposedly deaf bodyguard he had seen on his last trip, followed by two men in uniform with holsters on their belts.

Behind them, President for Life Tashmal duPaar, in what Diem guessed was dress uniform. More like Gilbert and Sullivan, complete with a galaxy of medals. He strode to the table as though marching to his own coronation.

As Diem stood, duPaar waved a hand, indicating the restaurant. “A good choice, is it not? Beautiful view, pleasant surroundings. And the food!” He touched his lips.

“I’m sure, Mr. President. But there are no other customers…”

“Aha!” DuPaar waved a dismissive hand. “Of course there are no other customers! I had the place cleared. Few are worthy of dining with the president of Haiti, and besides, other customers present security issues.”

“Ah, of course.”

As the two men were about to sit down, a figure dashed out of darkness to take the back of duPaar’s chair. A man, a Haitian of indeterminate age, seated duPaar and said something in what Diem guessed was Creole.

“The owner. He says it is a privilege to have me dine here tonight,” the president for life translated before replying in the same tongue. “I have ordered us a cocktail, as the Americans say, a taste of Barbancourt, our world-famous rum.”

Diem drank little, even less when on business, but like so many diplomats, he had learned how to take the tiniest of sips, enough to be able to comment on, say, a fine wine, but far too little to reach any stage of inebriation.

When duPaar had thrown down his second glass of the amber liquid, two beer bottles appeared. Though bearing the same label, one was green, the other brown. One long necked, the other not. One was certainly, or had been, a Budweiser. Haitian brewers, it seemed, recycled the bottles of their peers in other countries.

“Good Haitian beer,” duPaar announced. “Unlike some here in Petionville who drink the finest of French wines, I am a man of the common people, drink what they drink. One of the reasons they love me so. Besides, beer will go better with the dinner I have ordered prepared.”

The undersecretary saw no reason to mention the fact that few of those “common people” in the city below could afford to spend more than the national average annual income in an establishment like this, nor would he inquire why such security was necessary for a man so beloved.

The proprietor and another man placed platters before each man.

“ Lambi with rice,” duPaar announced. “Small, er, conchs dried in the sun and cooked with a spicy sauce. It goes well with beer, does it not?”

It would have gone better with CO 2 out of a fire extinguisher. The small, experimental bite Diem had taken singed his tongue and was now consuming his entire mouth. He was afraid to swallow for fear he would incinerate his intestines and stomach. Szechuan Chinese food was hot but a mere summer zephyr compared to the inferno he was experiencing.

He grabbed the beer bottle and emptied half of it at a gulp.

“As I said, the beer goes with the food, do you not agree?”

Diem was using his linen napkin to stanch the tears running down his cheeks. In his diplomatic career, he had been subjected to cuisine including hummingbird tongues, raw monkey brains and fried insects, but he had never suffered anything so painful.

DuPaar ignored his guest’s obvious discomfort, continuing. “The dish, lambi, is a meal of the common person. The conch, of course, come from the sea and are available to all. Many of the spices grow wild.”

Diem was now mopping the back of his neck.

“And the pepper… it is a small one.” DuPaar held his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. “Small but quite potent. I believe it to be peculiar to Haiti.”

Diem passionately hoped so.

The president for life was already smoking a cigar when Diem finished moving enough food around his plate to give the maximum illusion of having eaten it. It was a trick most diplomats learned early.

He was reaching for his Marlboros when duPaar slammed a fist down on the table hard enough to overturn the beer bottles.

“It is a fraud!” he screamed. He leaned over so that his face was inches from Diem’s, close enough to smell the alcohol on his breath. “Did you not think I would not run tests? Do you take me for a fool?”

The transformation from affable host to outraged victim was so sudden, the undersecretary was reduced to a stammer. “F-fraud?”

“The package, the one you retrieved from Venice.”

Diem swallowed his discomfort, both from food and company, and regained his composure. “Mr. President, I can assure you…”

Another fist hit the table, this time making the plates jump. “Assure? Assure what, that you have given me a worthless collection of partial bones?”

“But…”

Leaning even closer, duPaar lowered his voice to a near whisper that Diem found more disquieting than the outburst. “As soon as I received the package, I sent small parts of it to the States for testing of DNA. The bones were of a man, a Semite, who lived in the first century AD.”

Diem thought for a moment, remembering what he had learned of Western history and religion. “The Christians’ Saint Mark?”

Again, the thumping on the table and raised voice. “Saint Mark? Of course it may be Saint Mark. It did, after all, come from his tomb. It was your idea that the occupant of that tomb was someone else!”

Diem made a mental note to find the person in the Foreign Office who had made that determination. If he (or she) were lucky, they would end their career in what had been Tibet. If not lucky, in prison.

“Mr. President, I understand a mistake has been made. I can assure you my government will do everything in its power…”

Again, the menacing lowering of the voice. “And I can assure you that not one additional Chinese worker, not one more Chinese soldier, will set foot in Haiti until your promise is fulfilled. It was by my show of good faith there are any here now. I should have waited until your part of the bargain was complete. Do you understand me?”

“Perfectly, Mr. President. But the, er, material already…?”

“They can and will be removed!”

Without another word, duPaar stood, immediately flanked by the two uniformed bodyguards. He turned and stalked from the restaurant. It had definitely been one of the most bizarre evenings of Diem’s diplomatic life. But then, Diem had been spared dealings with North Korea’s Kim Jong Il, who certainly had a number of things in common with Haiti’s leader. Both lived sumptuously while their people starved. Both imagined they were well loved. They shared another trait: lunacy.

Port-au-Prince International Airport

(Formerly Francois Duvalier International Airport)

Thirty minutes later

Jerome Place had the specially modified cell phone hidden under the mangoes. Even at this hour at night, no one questioned the man in the ragged clothes who was wandering the airport’s perimeter road in an effort to sell his produce. Many such vendors had no homes, lived wherever they fell asleep.

Not Jerome. Six years ago, he had joined twenty-some other people in a voyage to America on a craft consisting of little more than boards tied across worn-out truck inner tubes and propelled by oars and a ragged sail. Few, if any, could swim.

The first day, before they even reached the Turks and Caicos Islands, two women and one of their infants had gone overboard. There had been nothing anyone could do as they sunk below the foaming waves. By the time the makeshift craft had reached the southern Bahamas, the slot between Great Exuma and Long Island, the fresh water had run out. The survivors argued: was it better to put ashore and be sent home by the Bahamian government or continue and risk death by thirst? A vote was taken.

Dehydration won over repatriation.

The third night three people died and two more simply were not present at dawn.

They were in the tongue of the ocean, that deep Atlantic trench off the eastern shore of Andros, when the high winds of a squall broke the makeshift craft apart. Fortunately for those few who had managed to somehow stay afloat, a cutter from the United States Navy Experimental Base on southern Andros happened to be in the area and fished the seven survivors from the water more dead than alive.

Refugees picked up at sea were routinely returned to their port of origin, particularly those obviously headed for illegal entry into the United States.

Not Jerome.

To his surprise, he was separated from his comrades and packed onto a helicopter that landed on a military base he guessed was somewhere in Florida. He also guessed, correctly, that this was because he was the only survivor who could both speak and read English, a language he had studied hard during the few years he had been allowed to attend the small Catholic school in his native village before his father determined work in the little family plot was more important.

Jerome’s new friends, the Americans, fitted him with new clothes, fed him and tutored him in basic computer skills, something Jerome doubted he could use in a country too poor to buy such equipment should he return home. He need not have worried. Two weeks later, he was in Port-au-Prince, equipped with a digital camera with night-vision lens, a small computer with a solar recharging unit and a thousand dollars American, more cash than a Haitian peasant would see in several lifetimes.

And promise of more. All he had to do was find a reason to hang around the airport, take and transmit pictures of arriving foreign passengers.

That was what he was doing tonight, taking and sending a series of digital photos of the man who had arrived after dark and was now returning to the aircraft. A few phone calls from people with whom Jerome had shared his wealth had alerted him to the dinner in Petionville and the fact that this man had failed to deliver something to the president for life, information he had just passed along to the Americans. Jerome had no idea who he was or why the Americans were willing to pay for pictures of him or information as to his activities in Haiti. He could not have cared less. The money was good, but better yet, his American friends had promised him he could eventually come to the United States, bringing little Jerome, his two-year-old son, and Louisa, the child’s mother.

Life would be good. People who worked hard in the United States became rich, and Jerome was certainly willing…

His euphoria over his good fortune had deafened him. He paid no attention to the sound of the automobile pulling up behind him. He suddenly heard the sound of a car door opening and closing.

Turning, his heart dropped into his stomach. In the lights from the airport, he could see two men approaching him. Limned by the glare of the airfield, he could not see their faces but he could tell both wore the aviator-style sunglasses that were the badge of President duPaar’s Secret State Security Police. The Duvaliers’ Tonton Macoute had been abolished when young Baby Doc abdicated to France in the early 1980s, but their replacement was just as feared. People who spoke unfavorably of their president for life, or who were suspected of doing so, still disappeared without a trace.

Jerome looked over his shoulder, considering making a run for it. No chance. The road circling the airport was fenced on both sides. He was not going to outrun the car whose engine was idling.

The two men approached without speaking, their silence alone menacing.

“Good evening,” Jerome said in Creole. “Perhaps you gentlemen would like to take some fresh mangoes home?”

Still, neither man spoke. Instead, one grabbed Jerome by the shirt collar, throwing him to the ground, while the other dumped the fruit from the cart. Jerome’s bowels constricted in terror as the man in sunglasses held up both camera and computer.

Still wordless, the man who had tossed Jerome to the ground produced a pistol of some sort and placed it next to Jerome’s head, motioning him to stand. The gun pressing against his temple, Jerome was marched to the car and shoved inside.

As the car drove away, Jerome’s fear was tinted with sadness that neither he, Louisa or little Jerome would ever have a chance to become wealthy in America.

Richard Russell Federal Building

75 Spring Street, Atlanta

The next afternoon

The Reverend Bishop Groom had been delighted at the half-million-dollar bail, an amount he could raise without the assistance of a bondsman. Lang guessed the equity in the preacher’s palatial home in the foothills of the northern Georgia mountains would more than cover the sum set by the federal magistrate.

Arriving at the elevators outside the courtroom, the usual cadre of television and press personalities surrounded Lang, the reverend and the long-suffering woman who was his wife. Lang had never actually heard her speak, but she held her husband’s hand, smiling dutifully at the TV cameras. In an age of trial by media, appearances counted.

“When will the case go to trial?”

“Is there any chance of a plea bargain?”

“Reverend, has attendance fallen off at your church?”

Lang sensed the reverend was about to reply and stepped in front of him, preempting the camera’s lens. Letting the accused make an unrehearsed statement to a voracious press was often a prelude to additional questions and disaster. “As those of you who were in the courtroom know, trial is set for early June. We intend to be ready to rebut all charges.”

The standard, vanilla bravado.

A woman with blinding white teeth and a shag pageboy too blonde to be believable shoved a microphone into the reverend’s face. “There are a number of women in your church who claim you had sex with them. What is your response?”

Lang swatted the microphone away like an annoying insect. “As far as we know, the government has made no such allegations.” He none too gently pushed his client toward an open elevator. “That’s all the comments we have.”

As the door hissed shut, the reverend dropped his wife’s hand, stuffing his own in his pocket. “I don’t understand why you insist I not talk to the press. I speak to thousands of people both on the air and in person every week.”

“True, but you control the sound bites. The media is in the entertainment, not the news, business. If editing a statement makes a story more interesting than what the person actually said, provides a better story line, how far are you willing to trust Eye Witness News at Six?”

The reverend had no response.

At basement level, Lang exited the building two stories below a viaduct spanning what had once been neighboring rail stations. Where dozens of railroads had converged to make Atlanta the transportation hub of the South, parking lots now flourished. Long before Lang had come to the city, the Southern Railway’s fanciful Moorish marvel, the Terminal Station, had been replaced by the unimaginative federal building he had just left. Lang had seen the pictures of the old building with its pair of unmatched minarets poking into a skyline that no longer existed.

Atlanta had a passion for the new over the old, a choice that had destroyed more landmarks than the railroad station. Lang supposed the trend had begun with Sherman, known locally as a Yankee a little too careless with fire or the first proponent of urban renewal.

In fact, Lang knew of a single building that had survived the 1864 burning: the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Francis’s church. The story, perhaps apocryphal, was that Sherman had ordered the city put to the torch, including its churches. A company of New Yorkers, recent Irish immigrants, had arrived to do the job when the current priest by the name of O’Day had appeared on the steps to deliver a graphic depiction of the fate of the souls of anyone who dared desecrate his church. Fearing hellfire more than the ire of their officers, the men in blue slunk away to falsely report the completion of their mission.

Lang always smiled at the tale, but this time it reminded him of the priest’s remarks about Saint Mark’s tomb. He checked his watch. A few minutes after 3:00.

A limousine appeared and its driver dashed from his seat to open a rear door.

“Can we drop you somewhere?” the reverend asked as his driver helped Mrs. Groom into the car.

Lang shook his head. “Thanks, but no. Remember, no press conferences, no words to anyone regarding this case.”

“I understand” were the last words the Reverend Bishop Groom spoke before he also disappeared into the interior of the limo.

It was one of those Atlanta winter days that promised, often falsely, an early spring. Knowing that the next week could as easily produce one of the region’s ice storms, Lang had decided to walk the approximate mile from his office to the federal building. He could return with a detour of only a few blocks if he went easterly along Martin Luther King Jr. Drive past the county courthouse to the church. He reached for his cell phone before deciding the walk would do him good whether or not Francis was in or out tending his flock.

As had become habit in the last few days, he stopped, this time to put his briefcase down and rest a shoe on a parked car’s bumper while he pretended to tie it. The gesture gave him an opportunity to check his surroundings. As far as he could tell, everyone he could see was either coming from or going to the building behind him. None of them looked Asian. Of course, there were any number of places on the viaduct where an unseen observer would have a view of the “railroad gulch,” as the area was locally if less than poetically known.

The buildings in this part of town were predominantly occupied by fast-food franchises, discount electronics shops and down-at-the-heels clothing stores. There was a welcome dearth of the beggars, bums and self-appointed “guides” that populated the greener pastures of the hotel and office districts. By and large, Lang had the sidewalks to himself.

He passed the Fulton County Administrative Building, a modern tower that had been designed to hold an oasis of flowing water and stately palm trees in its lobby. The twenty-foot trees had been installed at great expense, only to die both because no one had bothered to consult the county arborist as to the proper care and planting of the root system, and leakage of the pond around which they had been planted. Additionally, the clock in the modernistic tower displayed a perpetual 3:45 and inclement weather outside the building meant an archipelago of buckets inside to catch the offerings of a leaky roof. After the finger-pointing and accusations died down, the county’s elected leaders admitted the cost of construction of the building had so far exceeded budget that there remained no funds to fix the problems other than removing the dead tress and filling in the pool.

Lang crossed Pryor Street, walked along the northern side of the county-court complex and waited for the light to change so he might cross Central Avenue. The church was on the far corner. By now, Lang was surrounded by briefcase-toting lawyers, jurors discharged for the day, uniformed deputies and such other personnel as had business at the courthouse. He saw one or two Asian-looking men and women, none of whom paid him any attention.

Across the street, Lang passed the main entrance, opting for a side door into the complex that he knew led to the church’s offices. He walked down a short hallway plastered with children’s crayon drawings and a bulletin board heavy with notes and messages Lang suspected no one read.

At the end of the corridor a young black woman, her hair in cornrows, smiled up at him from the screen of her computer’s monitor. “Yes?”

“Father Francis, is he in?”

She nodded, reaching for the phone. “Who shall I say is here?”

“His favorite heretic.”

Her eyes narrowed, thinking she was being ridiculed. The door behind her opened and Father Francis stared out in obvious surprise.

“Praise be to heaven! The apostate has come to salvation!”

“More likely for a cup of coffee,” Lang said.

The priest nodded to the young woman. “Tawanna, would you be so kind…? One black, one sweetener only.”

Lang settled into one of two wooden chairs facing the priest’s desk. “Any particular reason you have such uncomfortable furniture?”

Francis sat behind a desk cluttered with books and papers, the sort of thing Lang would have expected to see had he been calling on a professor of English at one of the local colleges. “You’d have to ask whoever at the diocese provided them. My guess is that the furniture was perceived as a bargain.” He picked up a printed bulletin, scanned it and returned it to the pile already in front of him. “What can I do for you today? I’m betting it has nothing to do with your spiritual side… if you have one.”

There was a gentle tap on the door just as it opened. Tawanna pushed it wide with a hip, a steaming mug in each hand. She set them down on what little empty space the desktop had and left without speaking.

“Thanks!” Francis called afer her, handing one mug to Lang. “Now, you were saying…?”

Lang tested the brew before taking a full swallow. “The other day at lunch you made a remark about Saint Mark’s bones not being what was taken from his tomb in Venice. If not his, whose?”

Francis leaned forward, resting his elbows on his desk and making a steeple of his fingers. “You want the short answer or the long one?”

“I get a choice?”

Francis untwined his fingers to pick up his coffee. “In the mid-first century, Saint Mark served as bishop of Alexandria, then the second-largest city in the Roman Empire. He was so efficient at converting the Egyptians to Christianity, the priests of the old gods stirred up a mob that dragged him out and killed him. They intended to burn his body, thereby depriving him of the afterlife in which they believed. Legend has it a miraculous storm intervened, dousing the flames that had only partially consumed the saint’s remains. Somehow the Christians retrieved the body and buried it in their church by the sea. Subsequently the Church of Saint Mark the Evangelist was erected on the site.

“By 828 Egypt was under the rule of the Turks, Muslims. In the city of Alexandria, Christian churches were being looted, torn down for building material or converted to mosques. Fearing for the relics of their city’s patron saint, two Venetian traders stole the bones, hid them under a layer of pork to discourage Turkish customs officials from examining the basket in which they were hidden and brought them to Venice.”

Lang put his mug down on the corner of the desk. “I know. The event is memorialized in mosaics in the basilica in Venice. But so far, you haven’t explained why the bones there aren’t Saint Mark’s.”

“Gutta cavat lapidem, consumitur anulus usu.”

Lang shifted his weight in an unsuccessful attempt to make the chair more comfortable. “I’m aware a drop hollows out stone and a ring wears away by use. The Roman proverb counsels patience, not endurance. If a church in Alexandria was built over the partially incinerated remains of Saint Mark and those bones were subsequently stolen and moved to Venice, why would they not still be there?”

Francis held up a finger. “Perhaps because they were never there in the first place. By the time the Venetians took whatever it was they stole, the church had long been destroyed. They claimed to have found the relics amid ruins of what they supposed had been the church, since the rubble was located by what had been known variously as Saint Mark’s Gate or the Pepper Gate, the entrance into the ancient part of the city from what is now Cairo. A number of ancient travelers had described the church as being located just inside this gate as late as the mid-seventh century.”

“Are you saying the relics could be anybody’s?”

A shake of the head as Francis leaned forward over the desk again, coffee forgotten. “Not at all. There was someone else of note buried in Alexandria over two centuries before Saint Mark ever set foot in Egypt.”

Lang stared at his friend. “Alexander the Great?”

“Indeed. His mummified body was hijacked on its way to Macedonia, taken to Memphis, then to Alexandria. Possession of the remains legitimized the Ptolemy dynasty’s rule of Egypt until the Romans came along.”

“But how…?”

“Alexander was viewed as a god by the Egyptians, the son of Ammon. For that matter, the Greeks also deified him as a son of Zeus, and much later, he even appeared in chapter eighteen of the Koran as Zulqarnain, the two-horned lord.”

“Two horned?”

“He was depicted on coins and some statues sprouting a pair of ram’s horns.”

Lang put down his mug half-empty. “That still doesn’t explain how he got into Saint Mark’s tomb.”

“He didn’t. The Venetian grave robbers looted the wrong tomb.”

Lang started to protest when Francis waved a hand, signaling for quiet. “Both Alexander and Saint Mark were buried in the same section of the city, the palace district, which was destroyed by an earthquake and tsunami in 365 AD. There’s no firsthand eyewitness account of Alexander’s mausoleum after that; plus, in 391 the emperor Theodosius banned paganism. The edict would have provided a perfect excuse to loot whatever was left of the building.”

“Like the golden sarcophagus?”

“One of the subsequent Ptolemys had already sold it to pay his army.”

Lang held up both hands. “OK, OK. Let’s cut to the chase. What makes you think these Venetians pinched Alexander instead of Saint Mark?”

Francis spun his swivel chair around to face the bookcase behind the desk. Studying the shelves for a moment, he pulled out an oversize paperback and held it up. “Andrew Chugg’s The Quest for the Tomb of Alexander the Great. ” He thumbed through the pages. “Here. In describing an account of the theft of the saint’s remains from Alexandria, the smell of embalming spices from the basket they used was overpowering. That was why they topped it off with pork. No way the Muslim Turk customs officials were going to touch pork.

“Embalming spices! The early Christians didn’t embalm, but the Egyptians did in the mummification process. And Alexander was mummified, remember?”

“So were hundreds if not thousands of Egyptians.”

“No doubt. But the area around the Pepper Gate wasn’t a series of tombs, it was where a number of royal buildings were.”

Lang smiled. “An interesting theory, but DNA testing could easily tell a Jew from a Greek, and carbon dating might establish when the body died.”

“The church has already denied permission for such tests to be run.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

Francis put the book on his desk. “Why the interest?”

“I figure the more I know about what was really stolen from Saint Mark’s in Venice, the better chance I have of knowing who tried to kill Gurt and me. And who sent the man who broke into our house.”

“Someone broke into your home? Anything stolen?”

“The, er, security system worked beautifully.”

Francis leaned back, his chair protesting. “And you think this break-in had something to do with what happened in Venice?”

Lang saw no reason to mention the use of the listening device by the unknowns the night the priest had last visited. “It had occurred to me, yes.”

Francis tsk-tsked, slowly shaking his head. “And I thought when Manfred came along, you and Gurt were going to settle down, live like normal people.”

Lang took a final sip of coffee, noting it had gone both cold and bitter. “Trying to kill us in Venice and burglarizing my house was not my idea. Thanks for the coffee and the lecture. Interesting that you think it was Alexander’s remains that were taken from the church.”

Francis shook his head. “I didn’t say that.” He held out the book. “I said this guy Chugg postulates that Alexander’s remains were taken from Alexandria. It’s entirely possible the tomb robbers you encountered in Venice read the same book and accepted his theory. Stealing Alexander’s remains makes a lot more sense that Saint Mark’s.”

“And that would be why?”

“Ancient legend has it that whoever possesses the body of Alexander will never be defeated in battle, again according to our friend Chugg.”

“So now we not only have grave robbers, we have superstitious grave robbers.”

Francis placed the book back on its slot on the shelf. “That should narrow the field as to suspects somewhat.”

Ansley Park

Later that afternoon

A winter twilight was waiting on the eastern horizon by the time Lang accelerated the Porsche onto Ansley Park’s meandering streets. Streetlights were stuttering on, their bluish fluorescence painting trees, shrubbery and buildings alike a ghostly hue. There were few people to be seen on the sidewalks and the winding byways. Early evening provided the temptation to unleash a few of the horses under the car’s rear deck lid and enjoy handling capabilities daytime traffic curtailed.

With that possibility in mind, he had taken the long way around, entering not at Fifteenth Street at the park’s southern edge but Beverly Road on the north. Only in second gear, he was enjoying the throaty burble as the tachometer whisked past 5000 RPM so much he almost missed the parked car.

Lang’s house on Lafayette Drive faced one of Ansley Park’s several small parks and green spaces, a strip of sculpted trees and small waterways known as Iris Garden, a venue managed by residents rather than the city in much the same way New York residents at one time maintained private parks, of which Gramercy is the last. Unlike New York, though, Iris Garden is not fenced in. The view of its ancient oaks, babbling water and seasonal shrubbery were a primary reason he and Gurt had selected their home.

Lang had planned to round the park, passing his house on the far side across the green space, and take a left-hand sweeper at the park’s western edge, which would bring him to his driveway. Because of the narrowness of the street along the park’s northern edge, parking at the curb was for bidden, a prohibition observed by anyone not wanting to risk finding their car a victim of an anonymous collision.

But there was a car parked there, perhaps fifty yards right across the park from his house.

Lang continued past, turning right rather than left at the street’s dead end into Peachtree Circle, a wide boulevard where street parking was allowed. Pulling the Porsche over, Lang cut the engine, locked it and began to backtrack. He was careful to keep in the shadows, where the fingers of light from the street lamps did not reach.

Rounding the corner, he could see the automobile in question clearly. The lighted tip of a cigarette told him this wasn’t some careless soul who had left his vehicle in a precarious position while he ran a short errand to one of the abutting houses. Whoever was in that car was there for a more sinister purpose.

Keeping in darkness as much as possible, Lang approached until he was no more than six feet from the car’s rear bumper. Against the streetlights’ glow, he could clearly see a single person aiming some sort of device across the park. Lang didn’t have to guess. The listener was back, this time in a position not so easily observed from the house.

A dilemma: Lang could sneak away unobserved, warn Gurt the house was under audio surveillance and wait for an opportunity to find out who this snooper was. Or he could take direct action, alerting the person or persons they had been detected, and perhaps identify them.

Stooping, Lang duckwalked to the rear of the car to keep below the line of sight of the rearview mirrors. By now, he was beside the driver’s door.

His knees were already protesting his cramped posture and he was about to lose feeling in his lower legs. Nevertheless, he made himself be still. How long did it take to smoke a single cigarette, anyway?

He was rewarded when the window scrolled down. A hand with the cigarette in it appeared above his head and flipped the burning tobacco away in an arc of sparks. Like a spring suddenly uncoiling, Lang stood, grabbing the arm and twisting so the man inside was forced against the dashboard. With his free hand, Lang reached inside the car, unlocked the door and dragged the man outside, forcing him facedown on the sidewalk. He struggled and Lang wrenched the arm upward.

“Be still or it comes right out of the socket,” he snarled.

Still pushing the arm upward, Lang put a knee between the shoulders as he used his free hand to pat the man down. It took only seconds to relieve the prone man of an automatic in a shoulder holster and a wallet in a hip pocket. Lang stuffed the weapon into his belt under his suit jacket and the wallet into a pocket before dragging the man to his feet and shoving him against the car.

He ratcheted the arm up a little farther. “OK, who the hell are you and who sent you?”

The only answer was a groan of pain.

“You’ll answer me or I’ll tear it loose and beat you over the head with it.”

Lang and his opponent were suddenly bathed in light. “Hold it right there!”

Lang looked up into the headlights of a police cruiser.

Swell.

Possibly, some neighbor had witnessed what was going on, and the 911 system had experienced another of its occasional successes. More likely, it was one of the rent-a-cops Ansley Park paid to beef up the virtually nonexistent regular patrols of the neighborhood.

“Back, stand back,” the voice from the car commanded. “And keep your hands where I can see them.”

By this time, porch lights were flickering on up and down the street.

Lang slowly let go of the man’s arm and stepped back, his hands held above his head. The man beneath him struggled up, took one look at the police car and bolted.

“Stop!” the cop yelled with no effect whatsoever.

It took only a nanosecond for the officer to realize he would have to abandon one potential arrestee for another in full flight. The old bird-in-the-hand theory. A bird that required no exertion to reduce to possession.

Lang pointed at the running man. “He tried to mug me. Stop him!”

The portly officer took only a glance as the fleeing man rounded a corner, before turning his attention to Lang. “You got ID?”

Lang produced his wallet, removed his driver’s license and handed it over for inspection under the beam of a flashlight.

The officer looked up. “You live around here, huh?”

“I can vouch for him, officer.”

Both Lang and the cop turned to see an elderly man in an old-fashioned smoking jacket and carpet slippers. Lang recognized him from one of the few neighborhood-association functions he had attended. He couldn’t put a name to the face, but for once he was going to benefit from the mind-your-neighbor’s-business culture of Ansley Park.

“And who’re you?” the officer demanded.

“Frank Hopkins,” the man puffed, clearly chagrined the policeman didn’t recognize him. “President of the Ansley Park Civic Association.”

The cop nodded. “Oh, yeah, Mr. Hopkins, I recall you now. I spoke about crime prevention at the meeting at your house a year or so ago.” He turned to Lang, returning the driver’s license. “You say the guy was trying to mug you?”

“That’s right,” Lang improvised, hoping Hopkins hadn’t seen all of what had happened. “He jumped out of that car right there and grabbed me. He was going for my wallet.”

“Looked to me like he wasn’t very successful,” the cop observed, “but I’ll still need to make a written report.”

Lang gave a brief if fictional account of what had happened, stopping several times as the policeman filled in a number of blanks and added a written narrative. His manner suggested filling out reports of robberies, both attempted and otherwise, was nothing new. The report, Lang suspected, would be duly filed away and intentionally forgotten lest it be counted in the city’s carefully edited crime statistics, numbers that uniformly demonstrated Atlanta was a safe city with an ever-decreasing crime rate, which was cold comfort to crime’s victims.

“Your association dues at work,” Hopkins observed proudly. “If this officer hadn’t come along…”

It was as though he was personally taking credit for Lang’s perceived rescue.

The policeman put his clipboard with the report on it back in his car and walked around the one deserted at the curb, painting it with his flashlight. “Rented.”

For the first time, Lang noted the Hertz sticker just above the tag. “The name of the renter should be on the papers. Try the glove box.”

The cop opened the passenger door, reached inside and produced what Lang recognized as a parabolic listening device and a set of earphones. “What’s this?”

Specifically, Lang thought, it is a DetectEar, available for just under five hundred bucks plus shipping and handling from any spyware order-by-mail warehouse. With a collapsible twenty-inch dish and only three triple-A batteries, it can pick up voices three hundred yards away. A glance told Lang it had obviously been modified in some manner to pick up the vibrations of conversations inside, the modification that had caused the humming sound on the phone.

That there was a market for such things was not a favorable comment on contemporary American society.

He said nothing.

“Looks like some kind of spy-movie stuff” came from a group of curious residents who had gathered.

“Someone was snooping!” Hopkins’s tone indicated national security might rest in the privacy of Ansley residences.

Shrugging, the policeman put it in the cruiser and pulled a sheet of paper from the glove box, holding it up to the light. “Car was rented a week ago by a James Wang of Doraville.”

Doraville was an Atlanta suburb popular with Vietnam immigrants, Koreans and Chinese, so popular that the local city council had required all business signs to be in English in addition to their proprietors’ native alphabets so fire and police could find them in an emergency.

“That should make it easy to check out,” Hopkins volunteered. “How stupid can you get?”

If Lang was going to bet, he’d put his money on the fact Mr. James Wang of Doraville was in for a very unpleasant surprise. Either his identification or rental car or both had been stolen. Again, he said nothing.

Twenty minutes later, Lang garaged the Porsche and walked into the kitchen, where Gurt was bent over, opening an oven that emitted a delicious aroma of freshly baked bread. Manfred was seated at the kitchen table, moving a pair of toy trucks around with appropriate sound effects. Grumps, ever the optimist, was attentively watching Gurt in hopes of a stray scrap or dropped morsel. He gave Lang the briefest of glances before returning his attention to the stove.

“Whatever happened to the tail-wagging welcome?” Lang asked rhetorically before giving Gurt’s rear an affectionate pat, much to Manfred’s amusement.

“Vati schlug Mommy’s ass,” he chortled.

“It appears our son is learning more in school than we might wish,” Lang observed, lifting the little boy by the arms and swinging him in a circle.

Gurt straightened up, a pan in her hands, and gave Lang an appraising look. “You have been to the boxing ring instead of the office?”

Following her gaze, Lang noticed for the first time that one of the seams of his jacket was ripped and his knee gaped from a hole in his trousers.

“I met someone on the way home,” he said pointedly, setting Manfred down. “We can talk about it later.”

Gurt set the pan on the table. No doubt about it, it was home-baked bread. She gently slapped Lang’s hand as he reached to break off a piece. “And you can let it cool. Your friend Miles called. He said he’d call back at ten o’clock our time.”

Lang reached to his belt and removed the weapon he had taken from the listener, laying it on the kitchen counter. He was not surprised to see that it was another knock-off Tokarev.

Gurt’s eyebrows arched. “Perhaps the person you met was Chinese?”

“Too dark to tell, but that’d be my guess. Oh yeah, I got this, too.”

He dropped the wallet beside the pistol. By this time Manfred’s attention had returned to the trucks.

Gurt picked it up, flipping it open. “James Wang? He was the person you met?”

Lang took it from her hand and started pulling out credit cards. “I doubt it, but I intend to find out. What’s for dinner, er, Abendessen, ” he said, remembering to speak German in front of Manfred. Except when the subject matter was one he preferred his son not understand.

“Schweinefleisch mit Apfel. ”

Pork with apples.

With Manfred now in prekindergarten, Gurt spent her new leisure time preparing native German dishes contributing to both Lang’s delight and his potentially expanding waistline. He put in extra time at the driving club’s gym to remove the extra five pounds. Observing her domesticity in the kitchen amused him: the world’s only gourmet cook who had repeatedly won the Agency’s marksmanship trophy.

She rapped his knuckles with a spoon as he attempted to lift the lid of one of several pots on the stovetop. “It will be ready by the time you have a drink and watch the news,” she said in German, “unless you continue to get in the way.”

Evicted from the kitchen, Lang wandered into the library/den and opened the doors of a walnut buffet de corps to reveal a sound system and TV screen. Punching the remote, he moved to the bar and poured a liberal dose of scotch into a glass as the newscaster interviewed an official with the water department. In the third year of a drought, the city had imposed strict limits on watering lawns, washing cars or filling swimming pools. The decline in water usage had, predictably, resulted in lower water bills. The water department’s solution to declining revenue was to raise rates.

Government’s principal function: extorting money from the governed.

Lang was tempted to add more scotch.

Or turn off the news.

22:01

Manfred long asleep, Lang and Gurt were propped up in bed themselves, engrossed in separate books.

When the phone rang, Lang looked at the clock on the bedside table before picking it up. “Hi Miles. I was beginning to worry.”

There was the usual split-second delay of multiple relays. “Sorry. You have any idea what time it is where I am?”

Lang flicked his eyes to the bedroom windows, making certain the sound shields were in place. “Of course not. I have no idea where you are. What did you find out?”

“You sure this line is secure?”

“Reasonably certain. Why?”

“You’ve been keeping some pretty questionable company. The guy you wanted ID’ed goes by a number of names, Wang Jianfei being most likely his real one.”

“I’m not planning on Googling him.”

“Wouldn’t do you a lot of good. I doubt he’s on Facebook, either.”

“OK, Miles, what did you find out other than a possible name?”

“Nasty character. Works for the Guoanbu.”

“The Chinese state-security people? Last time I looked, their spooks were busy ferreting out dissenters and other troublemakers in their own country to send to the Chinese equivalent of the gulags. Why would they go extraterritorial?”

“We’d like to know that, too. In fact, it’s part of a puzzle we’re working on right now.”

“Care to tell me about it?”

“Not on a line I’m not one hundred percent sure is secure. Tell you what, though: I’ll be in Atlanta day after tomorrow and I’ll buy lunch.”

“Great! Let me give you my office address.”

A dry chuckle. “We’re an intelligence agency, remember? I already have it.”

The line went dead.

Gurt lowered her book. “Chinese state security?”

“Miles thinks the guy who broke in here works for them.”

Gurt turned toward him, an elbow propping up her head. “But why. ..?”

“Same question I asked Miles.”

“He is coming here, Miles?”

“So he says.”

Gurt was staring into space. “Strange. He never came back to the States the whole time I knew him. We used to tease him that he wouldn’t come back to this country because he’s knocked some woman down, made her pregnant.”

“Knock up, not down.”

“But you knock someone down, not up.”

“Too bad Miles didn’t know the difference.”

“To come here maybe he wants something.”

“Perhaps. But what?”

The question might have been answered had Lang and Gurt been privy to the phone call Miles made after hanging up.

“Ted? It’s me, Miles.”

“Hello Miles. In case I forgot to thank you, that was great paella in San Juan last week. What’s up? But remember this isn’t a secure line.”

“Glad you liked the paella. Nice thing about San Juan is there’s plenty of it, and Puerto Rico is geographically desirable for keeping an eye on the Caribbean. Speaking of which, you recall I spoke of a fishing trip?”

Ted had to think a moment to recall the remark. “ ‘Fishing around’ for a new asset, I believe is how you put it.”

“Well, I think I have a nibble.”

Law offices of Langford Reilly

11:52 two days later

Miles had changed little in the years since Lang last saw him, his wardrobe not at all. He could have stepped out of GQ. Silk foulard peeping out the breast pocket of a tailored double-breasted blazer with brass buttons bearing the seal of Princeton University, glen plaid gray wool slacks that just caressed loafers that, if you happened to be some sort of lizard, were literally to die for. A red silk tie nestled on a pinpoint oxford shirt. His hair, cut fashionably long, was parted along a streak of premature silver.

Hands clasped behind his back, he was studying the view from the floor-to-ceiling window behind Lang’s desk. Seasonal winter weather had returned. Ragged patches of dirty gray clouds smeared the window with moisture. The mist parted occasionally to allow sights of the street twenty stories below. Pedestrians concealed by umbrellas scurried back and forth to get out of the bone-chilling drizzle that lasted days at a time, uninterrupted by sunlight. Lang had to make an effort not to let the monotonous damp and chill become depressing.

“Weather’s the same, but not quite the view of the Frankfurt Bahnhof,” Miles ventured.

“Thankfully.”

Miles turned to appraise the office’s appointments: eighteenth-century mahogany partners desk with fruitwood inlay. An elaborately carved hunt table behind it served as a credenza. A pair of leather wingback chairs with the distinctive carved-claw feet of Irish Chippendale were on either side of a small Boulle commode. To the right of the desk, a Georgian breakfront showed leather-bound books through wavy, handblown glass at least two and a half centuries old. The muted reds and blues of a Kerman rug floated on the polished wood parquet floor.

Hands still behind his back, Miles moved to study a landscape on the wall facing the desk. “Reynolds?”

Lang smiled. “Good guess. School of.”

Miles waved a hand, including the entire office. “No more government issue for you! I’ve seen lesser antiques in museums. Any chance your clients have a clue what they’re looking at?”

“Probably not, but they know they’re not in the public defender’s office.”

“Ah, well, wasn’t it Shelley or Keats who observed, ‘beauty is truth, truth beauty’?”

“Keats, in ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn.’ Your Ivy League education is showing.”

“Never could keep those guys straight.” Miles helped himself to a seat in one of the wing chairs. “Well, the point is, you have these things here because you enjoy them.”

“I have these things here because I charge outrageous fees.”

Miles thought about that for a moment. “Nice to make money without risking your neck.”

Lang grinned. “Miles, you’re still with the Agency because that’s what you want to do. Which includes why you’re here today.”

“Touche.”

“Which raises the question…”

Miles cleared his throat. “I thought we might discuss it after lunch.”

“I thought we might discuss it now, in case it makes me ill.”

“Ah, Lang, where is the charm, the gracious manner of our native Southern homeland?”

Lang couldn’t suppress a chuckle. “You have it all, Miles. You want something and you know I know it.”

“Never could slip one by you, Lang.” Miles leaned forward in his chair, elbows on his knees. “In one word, Haiti.”

“Haiti?”

“You know, the western half of the island of Hispaniola. Voodoo, zombies, Papa Doc.”

“Poverty, disease, corruption. Not exactly a place Club Med would locate. I can’t imagine anything happening there that would interest anybody but hand wringers, missionaries and the other do-gooders.”

Miles was twisting the tip of his tie between his index and middle fingers, a nervous gesture Lang recalled from years ago. “Until about a month ago, we weren’t.”

“And then?”

“You recall the old SAMOS-F satellite?”

“Navy intelligence, low earth orbit. One of the first to send encrypted surveillance photos. Mostly phased out years ago.”

“That’s the one. We have a couple still functioning.”

“You’re not telling me this to demonstrate how the taxpayers’ money is being saved.”

Miles dropped the tip of his tie. “Hardly. The one I have in mind has an orbit that covered the Caribbean. Someone noticed a series of ships transiting the Panama Canal from east to west and heading from the canal to the north coast of Haiti.”

“So?”

“Since the company owned by the Chinese army has the operating contract for the canal, we monitor Panama fairly regularly. These same ships, the ones headed for Haiti, were Chinese freighters.”

“Maybe the Chinese have found a way to build a car cheap enough for the Haitians to afford it.”

“Cars aren’t crated for shipment. Whatever was unloaded was in containers.”

Lang leaned back in his chair, his hands intertwined across his stomach. “Miles, even back in the dark ages when I was still with the Agency, the resolution of the intel from satellites could distinguish a Ford from a Chevy from three hundred miles up. Whatever was in those containers should have been visible when they were unloaded.”

Miles shook his head. “Should have been. But the Haitians, or whoever was on the ground, dragged them up into the mountains. Those hills are high enough to be in the clouds. The SAMOS-F didn’t have the technology to photograph through cloud cover.”

“I’m sure it’s classified, but I’ll bet we do now.”

Miles was playing with his tie again. “Without saying we do or don’t, I can say that wherever the contents of those containers are now, they aren’t where we can see them.”

Lang pondered this a minute. “What about HUMINT, human intelligence? Surely you have someone on the ground.”

“Until now, Haiti didn’t rate more than a single full-time asset. He disappeared. We have a stringer or two but no idea how reliable they might be. So far, whatever was in those containers might as well have vanished.”

Lang stood, seeing where this was headed. “Miles, I am glad to see you, and Gurt is thrilled to join us for lunch. We’d be pleased if you could stay awhile, have you as our guest. That being said, I am not, repeat, not, going to Haiti.”

“But what makes you think-?”

Lang held up an index finger. “You make your first visit to the U.S. anyone can remember.” A second finger. “You aren’t telling me this story to pass away the time until Gurt joins us.” Third finger. “And you just got through telling me you are shit out of luck when it comes to assets already on the ground. I may have been out of the game for awhile but the rules never change: when you need assets, you get them wherever you can. Now, did I miss anything?”

Miles held up both hands, feigning surprise. “Did I say anything about you going to Haiti?”

Lang sat back down, smirking. “No, of course you didn’t. I suppose I got some exercise jumping to conclusions. I should never have thought it would have crossed your mind to try to employ a retired agent, someone with no publicly known ties to any U.S. intelligence agency, and therefore plausible deniability, to go snoop around to see what’s going on between the largest remaining communist state and one of the world’s craziest dictators, right on our Caribbean doorstep. I know that’s something you would never do.”

“Do what?”

Neither man had noticed Gurt step into the office.

“Gurt!” Miles embraced her-a little too enthusiastically, Lang thought. “You’re more beautiful than I remembered!”

“Beware of Miles bearing compliments,” Lang said dryly as Gurt disentangled herself. “Our friend here wants to send me on an all-expense-paid trip to sunny skies, summer temperatures, white beaches, the whole lot.”

Gurt looked from Lang to Miles and back again, aware she had missed something. “Only you? Why not us both?”

“That could be arranged,” Miles said.

Lang sat back down. “Go on, Miles, explain.”

Miles did, ending with, “However you two got tangled up with the Guoanbu and their man Jianfei, it may well be related to my problem.”

“Just how do you figure that?” Lang asked, leaning back in his chair, hands now clasped on top of his head. “Seems like a bit of a stretch.”

“Maybe so,” Miles replied. “But the Chinese have historically shown little or no interest in operating in the Western Hemisphere until they took over management of the canal some years ago. We have cracked Cuban, Soviet, even Israeli spy rings operating in the country, but never Chinese. Now, all of a sudden, one of their operatives is caught in your house only a few weeks after we find they have some sort of an interest in Haiti. I know how much you, Lang, believe in coincidence.”

“Not at all, but what you’re suggesting is still pretty lame.”

Miles held up both hands again, this time in submission. “You’re right, lame as a one-term politician. I’m probably grasping at straws.”

Lang narrowed his eyes. Miles wasn’t one to give up so easily. “But?”

Miles watched Gurt slide into the other chair, nylons whispering as she crossed her legs. “If there’s no connection between the Guoanbu’s sudden interest in you and what’s going on in Haiti, then you, Lang, or better yet, both of you, get a few days in the sun at Agency expense.”

“And on the off chance you’re right?”

“Then you’ll know.”

“Know what?” Gurt asked. “It is a… a… what do you say? A ‘stretch’ to think we will find out why Chinese state security broke into our house by going to Haiti.”

“And why us?” Lang wanted to know. “The Agency must have a dozen or so employees who’d love to spend a few winter days in the Caribbean.”

“Because you, both of you, can easily pass for Europeans on a holiday.” Lang started to protest but Miles dashed forward. “Look, you owe me a favor, remember? I’m the one who stuck out his neck to identify those people as Chinese intel. We, the Agency, can’t currently spare any Ops personnel who could pass for a German couple taking advantage of Haiti’s low hotel rates.”

“The rates are low,” Lang observed, “because few people want to go there. And you can’t spare any operatives because this is ninety-nine percent certain to come up empty.”

“I have never been to the Caribbean,” Gurt announced.

Lang was surprised. Not that Gurt had never been to the Caribbean but that she was showing interest in Miles’s suggestion. “If you want the Caribbean, believe me, Haiti is not the place to begin.”

Gurt gave him a quizzical look. “Is it not warm and sunny there this time of year? Do they not have beaches like I see in the magazines?”

Lang could see Miles was anticipating victory. “Yeah, but…”

“And is it not possible that the people in Venice who tried to kill us were Chinese?”

“Certainly possible,” Lang had to agree.

Miles clapped his hands. “Good! It’s settled then. I’ll make the arrangements. Now, where am I taking you to lunch?”

“Not so fast,” Lang cautioned. Turning to Gurt, he said, “We’ve just come back from several days in Venice. I don’t want to impose on our neighbors to keep Manfred again so soon…”

Gurt turned to Miles, saying conversationally, “Lang believes his son cannot live a few days without him. When he is away, he has to call the child at least twice a day. It as though Manfred is some sort of vegetable that will perish without his attention.” To Lang, she said, “Manfred will get along fine with Wynn Three, his best friend. Besides, we are keeping the neighbor’s little boy for two weeks this summer.”

News to Lang. What wasn’t news was the fact they were going to Haiti. Gurt had made up her mind.

From the diary of Louis Etienne Saint Denis December 20, 1802 The First Consul’s ^ 1 favorite sister is again troublesome! For some years the sexual conduct of Pauline, the second of the three sisters, has been the talk of all France. Though charming and beautiful, the woman is without discretion. In June of five years past, the First Consul was at Mombello Palace near Milan when he walked in on his sister in the process of having congress with one of his generals, Leclerc. ^ 2 Feigning fury, the First Consul demanded her honor be salvaged, and on June 14 of that year, they were married at the home of the then general, all as previously described in this diary. The couple do not match each other. Leclerc is serious, his face in a perpetual frown, while his bride is frivolous and quick to laugh. She continues her flirtatious ways, while he blushes at attention from other women. In October of this year, realizing how tenuous is this union and aware of the scandal already growing concerning Pauline’s ill-concealed infidelities, the First Consul appointed Leclerc to put down the slave insurrection in Saint-Domingue. ^ 3 She refused to go despite the pleas of her new husband, who in desperation appealed to her brother. Pauline also refused him. Under no illusions as to the scope of the scandals Pauline would create if left alone, Napoleon ordered a sedan chair to be brought to his sister’s home by ten of his largest grenadiers. The soldiers strapped her into the chair and marched her to a carriage in which she was sent to the port and bodily carried aboard ship, screaming and cursing. The First Consul is well shed of her. A strange thing happened as the ship slipped its moorings and let the tide take it from the quay. I was sitting in the carriage with the First Consul when General Leclerc appeared at the rail with what looked very much like the selfsame box the First Consul had held so dear when we departed Egypt. Leclerc held it aloft for the First Consul to see. The First Consul replied with a salute, and Leclerc turned and disappeared from view.

1 Josephine thought her husband was to arrive at Le Havre and rushed there to meet him in hopes of squelching the news of her multiple adulteries. Napoleon was in Paris before she caught up to him.

2 Junot was the only general of Napoleon’s staff at this time who did not eventually achieve the rank of marshal of France. Could it be Napoleon blamed him for his wife’s indiscretions, a killing of the messenger?

3 She was born Marie-Josephe-Rose Tascher de La Pagerie. “Josephine” was the name Napoleon gave her.

4 Robespierre was overthrown and sentenced to the guillotine himself. A much-admired orator, he was on the scaffold addressing the mob when someone shot him in the jaw. He went to his death mute. Thus ended the Terror.

5 Martinique.

6 Small by the standards of Versailles, perhaps. Even today the formal garden surrounding Malmaison is impressive.

7 In June or July of 320 BC, Perdiccas arrived on the banks of the Nile to do battle with Ptolemy to retrieve Alexander’s mummified body. He was defeated by a combination of better intelligence by Ptolemy, having to cross a river with tricky currents and the voracious appetite of the Nile crocodiles, who fed on the living and dead for days afterward.

8 In spite of the mania for “logic” and “science” in postrevolutionary France, Napoleon had his personal astrologer, whom he consulted on matters both military and civil.

1 In November of 1799, Napoleon, aided by troops of General Leclerc, staged a coup, overthrowing the revolutionary government and bestowing this title upon himself.

2 Charles Victor Emmanuel Leclerc was only twenty-nine at the time of the nuptials. Pauline, or Paulette as she was known to her family, was twenty-one. He was not her first choice of husbands.

3 Haiti. At this time, the name included what is today the Dominican Republic. There is some evidence Leclerc’s mission was somewhat more ambitious and included a stepping-stone conquest of what are today Puerto Rico, Cuba and then the newly independent United States by way of French Louisiana. This theory might be indirectly supported by the fact Napoleon sold Louisiana within months of France’s withdrawal from Haiti, thereby ceding her last interest in the Western Hemisphere, other than an enclave in South America and a few insignificant islands.