The Bonaparte Secret

CHAPTER FIVE

472 Lafayette Drive, Atlanta

11:35 the same day

Almost dragging Manfred by the arm, Gurt reached her front door and fumbled in her pocket for the keys. What the hell was happening? Although those two men had not expressly said they were from the Agency, how else would they have known her real name and her Agency reputation? The tactics, poorly executed as they had been, were typical Agency, too. Miles had said he would have someone keep an eye out, not try to abduct…

Movement at the corner of her vision caused her to drop Manfred’s hand long enough to grasp the butt of the Glock as she turned, mindful of the ice on her doorstep.

A wet and shivering Randy slowly made his way up the drive. Water sloshed from his shoes and she could see him shivering from where she stood. Steam from his body heat enveloped him as though he were some spirit materializing on the front lawn.

He shook his head, chagrined. “Sorry, Mrs. Reilly, I don’t know what happened. One minute you and the little boy were in full view, the next I was floating in a fishpond. Some sort of tranquilizer delivered by…”

“By a dart gun,” Gurt finished for him, ignoring his surprise as she finished opening the door.

“Yeah, I guess that could have done it,” he admitted sheepishly. “But I don’t understand-”

She interrupted him with a motion. “Come. Inside before you die of hypothermia. You can take a hot shower, take some of Lang’s clothes.”

He crossed the threshold, visibly savoring the warmth. “Thanks. But first I need to call the office for reinforcement. Whoever knocked me out was obviously going after you. Are you all right?”

“Quite,” she assured him. “I saw the men responsible. You can call whoever you wish after you have shed those wet, cold clothes.”

His professional curiosity overcame his discomfort. “You saw whoever…?” He glanced round. “Where…?”

“They give no longer a problem and will not be back soon. Now, the hot shower.”

To the sound of water running upstairs, Gurt checked and rechecked the house’s alarm and security features before she called Lang’s BlackBerry. Perhaps he could explain what had happened. She got a cheery recording assuring her that if she left a name and number, he would call her back. Next, she called Lang’s office. Sara had not heard from him in two days. Unusual but not unheard of.

If only she knew how to contact Miles. Lang had his number around here somewhere. But where? Relenting and letting Manfred turn on the television as he ate a hastily prepared peanut butter and jelly sandwich, she left him to enter the closet under the stairs Lang referred to as his office. A five-minute search of the file cabinet produced a list with Miles’s name and a Washington, D.C., phone number.

She called it, leaving her name and BlackBerry number. Before she got back to where Manfred was teasing Grumps with the remainder of his sandwich, he called back.

“Gurt?” Miles’s voice lacked the normal breezy self-assurance. “I’ve been trying to contact Lang. I’ve gotten no answer.”

“I also,” Gurt said. “But that is not the only difficulty. Not an hour ago, two men tried to snatch Manfred and me.”

She paused, waiting for an explanation.

When none was forthcoming, she said, “The two were from the Agency, I am certain. What is happening, Miles?” she added pointedly.

“Er, I’m not sure. The reason I was trying to get hold of Lang was to tell him I was ordered to drop protective surveillance of him, your house and family. No explanation.”

“Miles…,” she began with more than a trace of accusation.

“No, no, I swear! That’s all I know, really.”

“But why?”

“I told you. I don’t know. Would I lie to you and Lang?”

As long as you have been employed by those people, in a heartbeat.

“It is possible the reason has been concealed from you?”

A snort. “Of course. No one is told more than they need to know. Surely you remember that.”

“It is also possible there has been some change in the policy that made protective surveillance desirable.”

“True,” Miles admitted, “but it would have to have been a change from outside. I get the internal memos.”

Gurt thought for a moment. “Outside? You mean…?”

“Anyone from the State Department, the White House, Defense. The possibilities are endless. It’s not the who that bothers me, it’s the why. As in why would this anonymous policy maker suddenly want to take you somewhere?”

“They said there were some very nasty people.”

“So, what’s different? There always are. No, my guess is they want to make sure you stay quiet about what you know, don’t go to the press.”

“About what?”

Another snort from Miles. “I’d guess this Chinese-in-Haiti matter. For whatever reason, some branch of government wants a lid kept on it.”

Gurt was truly puzzled. “But why?”

“Above my pay grade. If I knew that, I’d be heading up some government department, meeting with the prez on a daily basis. For the moment, I’d suggest you keep your head down.”

“What about Lang?”

“Lang will have to look out for himself. He has a pretty good record of doing just that. I hear from him, I’ll let you know.”

“But, Miles…”

He had ended the call.

Cairo International Airport 21:49

Lang had been unable to figure out what, if any, pattern there was to the bus’s stops. It seemed that a man waiting on the road’s shoulder merited stopping to let him aboard, as did a lone camel who preferred macadam to sand, or a herd of goats crossing the pavement. At last, the livestock delays diminished as darkness grew. At various points, a rider would stand, remove his luggage from the overhead bin and make his way forward to speak to the driver, who would then bring the bus to a wheezing halt to allow the passenger to disembark into the darkness. At each stop, whether or not someone was getting on or off, the door opened, admitting a hot cloud of swirling sand particles stirred up by the bus itself.

Lang had been relieved to hear the roar of a jet overhead, a noise that got louder with each takeoff or landing. When he could see signs in multiple languages bearing a pictograph of an airplane, indicating the road to the airport, he stood and retrieved his bag preparatory to getting off. By the time he reached the driver, two other men were also exiting the bus, both in blue short-sleeve shirts, dark pants and wearing identity tags around their necks. There was not enough light to read the cards, but Lang would have bet they indicated employment by one of the airlines.

Lang followed them as they dismounted and walked toward what looked like some sort of transportation shelter, a roof but no sides, like the bus stops in some American cities.

“Does a bus to the airport stop here?” Lang asked, hopeful one or both spoke English.

“Yes,” they said almost in unison before the smaller of the two continued. “The bus circles both terminals, the one we call the new airport, where Western European and American airlines are, and the old airport, where Eastern European, Arab and African airline gates are. We are going to the new airport.”

Lang sat beside them on a wooden bench, waiting until the bus chugged to a stop. All three boarded. In minutes, he was following the two into the terminal.

Due to the late hour, the chaotic mob Lang associated with Egyptian transportation hubs was absent. There were, however, the police with automatic weapons common to air terminals everywhere outside the U.S. A quick glance revealed two of these officers were showing an unusual degree of diligence in inspecting the papers of every person passing through the single security checkpoint while two more watched.

Normal procedure, or had the Alexandria security police alerted Cairo? He knew Cairo’s security was among the world’s toughest if not necessarily the most competent. Instead of random checks, every passenger’s background as shown by his passport was scrutinized, his carry-on searched as well as x-rayed.

Either way, Lang had a problem. If he used the Roth passport, he would be risking instant detention. His own would lack the Egyptian entry visa, raising questions he certainly didn’t want to answer.

His back to the rest of the terminal, he studied the TV screen of arrivals and departures. There was an Air France flight to Paris that departed in the morning and a Heathrow-bound British Airways plane half an hour later. He could buy a ticket now in his own name, but that would not only involve the missing visa, it would also give any Egyptian official scanning airline computers five- or six-hours’ notice of his intentions if the Alexandria police had discovered his identity.

There was no line at any of the ticket counters, most of which bore “closed” signs.

Handing his Roth passport to a brightly smiling young woman behind the British Airways sign and logo, he said, “I hope you have room on your flight to London in the morning.”

He listened to the click of a keyboard before she looked up, smile still in place. “Tourist or first-class?”

“First- class.”

At roughly twenty cents to the Egyptian pound, the number representing the cost of the ticket was astronomical. Lang reached for his wallet and feigned surprise and embarrassment. “I seem to have left my credit cards in my other pants.”

She gave a shake of the head, still impressed by the fact someone would pay that sum of money to ride in comparative luxury for four and a half hours. “No problem, Mr. Roth. I have the number from your passport. Here it is back. I will note that you will pick up the ticket two hours before departure tomorrow morning. Your seat will be reserved until then.”

He thanked her and exited the terminal but not before stopping by the electronic billboard of hotels. At the cabstand, he directed the driver to deliver him to the nearby Novotel with an intermediate stop at a nearby pharmacy. He was familiar with the worldwide chain of inexpensive lodging, clean rooms and little else. At the desk, he gave his own passport to the sleepy desk clerk, who, as expected, simply swiped it through the copy machine without noticing the absence of a visa and returned it. Lang was betting if his papers were checked against immigration records at all, he would be long gone before the discrepancy was discovered.

He gave the clerk a healthy tip and requested a wake-up call. Once in his room, he searched his wallet for the international calling card he always carried but had not used in over a year. Manfred answered on the first ring. “Hi Vati! Where are you?”

Resisting the temptation to visit with his son, Lang said, “I need to speak to your mother. Right now.”

He sensed the little boy’s disappointment from the silence before he heard him calling Gurt. Unfortunate, but the longer he was on the line, the better chance the call could be traced by anyone with the minimal equipment and know-how to tap a phone.

“Lang?” There was anxiety in Gurt’s voice. “I could not get you on your BlackBerry.”

“It’s on a South Pacific cruise at the moment with emphasis on south. ”

“I do not understand.”

“No time to explain. You and Manfred OK?”

“Yes. You?”

“I’m a moving target at the moment, but yeah, I’m OK.”

She told him about the men on the street and Miles’s thoughts. The whole thing fit uncomfortably snug with the cancelled credit card and the sudden unavailability of the driver Miles had provided. For whatever reason, the Agency was more interested in their silence than the help Miles had originally sought.

A sea change indeed.

“OK, here is what we’re going to do,” Lang said deliberately. “You and Manfred take a few days, go to the farm.”

The “farm” was a shack on farmland in middle Georgia Lang had purchased in a foreign corporate name some years ago. Its remoteness plus neighbors who were highly suspicious of intruders had proved it to be an invaluable hideout before, and Lang had improved it since its last use.

“We are having an ice storm here.”

“You are also having four-wheel drive on your Hummer. I’d risk the road before I’d depend on the weather to keep the Agency at bay. Next time they may send someone experienced enough to anticipate your tricks. And not to forget our Chinese friends. You can bet they still have us in mind. Oh yeah, don’t mention any of this to Miles.”

“You think…?”

“I’m not thinking anything; I just don’t want to take the risk that you and Manfred get stuffed into some Agency hideaway until whoever is calling the shots thinks different. I’ll call you on the neighbor’s phone when I can. Oh yeah, don’t use your BlackBerry. There’s a good chance somebody can triangulate.”

Lang hung up to a background of Manfred indignantly demanding to speak to him.

He woke up minutes before the call, the growling of his stomach reminding him he had not eaten since… when? Breakfast on the plane yesterday? Putting aside the growing protest, he carefully disassembled the Browning. He put the metal barrel component in his shave kit and distributed springs and catches among his shirts. Clips went into the shoes in his bag. In Egypt, firearms were prohibited, whether in carry-on or checked baggage. Breaking up the recognizable components of the weapon should defeat the curious eyes of the x-ray machine trained on even checked baggage. Ammo he sealed in plastic bags that he hoped would frustrate any sniffing mechanisms, chemical, mechanical or canine, looking for explosive compounds. He could only hope he had no need of the gun before his departure.

His next task required somewhat more care. Using a razor blade purchased at the pharmacy last night, he cut the page from the Roth passport bearing the Egyptian visa. Noting the page was the one with a picture of a Mississippi River boat on it, he razored the same from the real U.S. passport. Now the tricky part: using just a touch of the paper glue he had also bought at the pharmacy, he substituted pages. The alteration was not going to withstand careful inspection and it surely would be detected by electronic means upon reentry to the States, but that was not his problem at the moment.

He stopped in the lobby long enough to help himself to luscious-looking figs, dried dates and nuts from the hotel’s small breakfast buffet. His stomach cried out for more substantial fare but he did not have the time.

Back at the new airport, he joined the tourist-class line in front of the Air France counter. As he shuffled his bag along, he noted the British Airways desk thirty or so feet away. Two uniformed and armed security police were checking the passports of every male in the queue. Two men, conspicuous in their dark suits, watched. Lang thought he recognized Major Saleem before turning his back. Given the opportunity, he would bet the gate from which the plane to London was to depart was equally well covered.

Finally at the front of the line, Lang purchased what he was told was the last available seat on the Paris flight, paying with his American Express card. He hated leaving a record. The Chinese had proven adept at following him by credit-card receipts, but the alternative was more immediate: buying a ticket without prior reservations and paying cash almost guaranteed drawing the attention of either the security or drug-enforcement people.

Almost as unpleasant was the thought of checking his suitcase. Modern transportation had made it possible to have breakfast in New York, lunch in Paris and baggage in Tehran. Plus, standing at airport carousels waiting to determine the winners and losers in the luggage lottery tied him to one place when circumstances might dictate faster movement. Checked bags, though, did not get the thorough inspection carry-ons did. If he wanted the Browning in Paris, he had little choice.

He reluctantly watched his bag disappear on the conveyor belt. He’d get out of Egypt and worry about his problems later. The answer to some of them might well be in Paris.

472 Lafayette Drive, Atlanta

The previous evening

Gurt was also dealing with luggage, piling it into the maw of the Hummer in the garage. She had no idea how long she, Manfred and Grumps would be gone. The hour was late and the little boy was up past his bedtime. The novelty of a reprieve was beginning to wear off, leaving him cranky.

“Vati wouldn’t talk with me,” he said irritably, referring to Lang’s brief phone call. “I want him to come home!”

Me, too. But Gurt made soothing sounds. “He will be home soon enough. But while he is gone, we will drive to the farm.”

The child brightened. “Can we go fishing?”

There was a small pond on the property from which Manfred took great delight in catching bream with his own small fishing rod. He was less eager to eat them, however, resulting in most being thrown back.

Gurt had a brief picture of standing in the winter wind waiting for some unfortunate fish to find the worm-baited hook in the muddy water. “We will see.”

Manfred’s face squeezed into a pout. He was old enough to recognize the expression as meaning he would likely be told no, later.

A tapping on the garage door prevented potential unpleasantness.

“Mrs. Reilly?”

“In a moment,” she answered, recognizing the voice of Jake of the security service. The hapless Randy had been furloughed with the beginnings of a bad cold.

“Let me in.”

Turning off the lights that would have illuminated the garage like a theater’s stage, Gurt pushed the button to lift the door. “What.. .?”

Jake ducked under the door before it had fully lifted and pushed the “down” button with one hand, waving a device that looked like one of those used by security screeners at airports. “Just want to sweep your car.”

“Sweep? Ach! Of course. For homing devices. I cannot see how someone could have gotten in here…”

“You went to the grocery store yesterday. It’s possible we didn’t see someone hide a bug.” Jake was waving the device around the SUV’s perimeter, a Merlin of electronics with his magic wand, casting a contemporary spell. “Can’t be too careful.”

Moments later, the Hummer backed out of the garage, tires crackling on ice, and the door rolled shut. There was a certain security in being in a vehicle that was larger than some pickup trucks. Its very mass was the reason she had selected a car whose appetite for gas was insatiable and whose very size made it difficult to park. Its weight, she felt, formed the maximum protection for Manfred, securely strapped in his child seat. He would be unharmed in a collision with anything smaller than an eighteen wheeler. As the SUV reached the street, a Cadillac Escalade pulled in behind and another took its place. Gurt knew four armed men were in the following vehicle. They would stay in her wake until certain she was not being followed. She had insisted a car remain in front of the house to give the appearance of normality. Over Jake’s protests, she had also demanded the escort be broken off at a prearranged place if there seemed to be no need for it.

Four husky men in suits driving a shiny black SUV with tinted windows would draw as much attention in Lamar County as a painted fancy woman in the local Baptist church.

In the car’s mirrors, Gurt saw lights blink once, a periodic signal that the vehicle behind was Jake’s. The security men followed her through a tortuous course that took advantage of Ansley Park’s meandering streets and byways. So far, no other vehicle had joined the two, but Gurt was not satisfied. She took another tour of homes to be certain.

She made a left on Piedmont Road, one of the main streets of the northern section of the city. The traffic was moderate, making a tail difficult to spot. When she pulled through a service station to reverse course, only Jake’s vehicle followed.

Once southbound on the interstate, she was relieved to note the ice had melted except for a few dark patches along the exit lanes. The rhythm of the tires soothed her and put Manfred asleep in his child seat. Grumps snored from the back. Every two minutes, the blink from Jake. He was still in place behind her. Twice she exited the expressway only to drive back up the entry ramp and reenter.

No one other than Jake followed.

Once outside I-285, the perimeter surrounding the city, traffic became decidedly lighter, but it still would have been difficult to notice a car following them.

Aware of the problem, Gurt exited the four-lane, choosing a two-lane state highway instead. As shabby storage buildings and truck stops melted into a semirural landscape, there were a series of flashes in Gurt’s mirrors. Two plus two plus two.

Jake had picked up a possible tail.

As planned, she hit the accelerator, sending the big car rocketing down a short straightaway before braking for a curve. Jake’s headlights were fading quickly. He was slowing to block whoever might be following.

Gurt rounded the curve, praying she was now south of the effects of the ice storm. At this speed, she would not have time to avoid the slick patches. She shifted into four-wheel drive. Thanks to modern technology developed on the Formula One circuit, she would sacrifice no speed and be less likely to wind up in a ditch. But she was no Michael Schumacher; sooner or later she would have to slow down if road conditions did not improve.

She need not have worried-the decision was not hers.

Accelerating out of yet another curve, her headlights painted what she first thought was some sort of mirage: Two cars were pulled across the road. One had the markings of a local sheriff’s department, its Christmas tree of lights flashing malignantly. The other was an unmarked sedan, its very anonymity threatening. As she streaked closer, she could see two men in uniforms. Four others wore dark windbreakers with yellow lettering: FBI.

Charles de Gaulle International Airport

Roissy (just outside Paris) 10:42

Lang was in the CDG 2, the airport’s second terminal, waiting for the Metro train into the city. He had much for which to be thankful. His passport had received no more than a glance, his bag had not ventured off on an excursion of its own and he was clear of Egypt. Apparently there was no international “want” on him, not yet anyway. He guessed Major Saleem would query the English authorities first, unwilling to admit the British Airways reservation had duped him.

As soon as he cleared customs and passport control, he had retreated to the nearest men’s room to reassemble the Browning now comfortably at his back. He looked around, taking in the people sharing the platform. One or two tourists, noses in guidebooks, who had accepted the city’s miserable winter weather in exchange for deeply discounted airfares. Several businessmen armed with briefcases, suits sharply creased despite airline seats. Two families trying to quiet small children made restless by the inactivity of flight.

The sight made Lang think of Manfred. He missed his son and really should not have cut Manfred off last night. Ah well, Paris was full of toy shops that would buy childish forgiveness. He smiled, visualizing the joy his son demonstrated when Lang came home from a trip.

Yeah, so does Grumps, and you don’t have to bring him gifts.

Two train changes and forty minutes later, Lang exited the Opera station into the cold drizzle that characterizes Paris’s winters. His suitcase trailing behind him, he dodged traffic crossing one of the city’s busiest intersections, the place de l’Opera, and entered a nondescript building facing the ornate Opera Garnier. Inside, Lang passed an antique birdcage elevator to climb steps covered in worn carpeting. At the top he turned right, facing an old-fashioned glass door. He knew the opaque glass was the hardest bullet and blast proof available. He lifted his head, and the dim light reflected dully from the lens of a camera almost hidden in the shadows that hung from the ceiling like dull drapes.

Had he any doubts that the person he sought was still here, they were resolved.

A knock on the door caused it to silently open, leaving him facing another, this one of steel.

“Oui?” a woman’s voice asked from a speaker.

“Tell Patrick Louvere, Langford Reilly is here to see him.”

The voice switched to English. “He is expecting you?”

“I doubt that very much. Just tell him.”

Patrick Louvere was head of Special Branch, Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure, DGSE, France’s equivalent of the CIA. The bulk of the counterespionage organization had years ago been moved to the fort at Noisy-le-Sec. Only Patrick’s division remained in the city. During Lang’s employment, the Agency had a long-standing distrust of its French counterpart. Operation Ascot, a plan to stir separatist action in Canada, had been devised by de Gaulle and carried out by DGSE’s predecessor. In 1968 the same organization had supplied arms to secessionists in Nigeria’s Biafra region to wrest control from U.S. and British oil companies at a cost of over a hundred thousand lives. All of that was long before Lang’s time. He had worked with Patrick in the days of the Cold War and they had become close friends. It had been Patrick who had performed the sad duty of informing Lang that his sister Janet and her adopted son Jeff had died in a blast in the place des Vosges in the Marais section of Paris, where she was visiting a friend. Patrick had also helped cut a great deal of the red tape associated with shipping their bodies back to Atlanta.

The steel door swung open, revealing a man in a dark suit of Italian cut, the creases of the pants razor sharp. His shirt was crisply starched and his shoes gleamed with polish. Lang and his first wife had often joked that Patrick had to change clothes two or three times a day to always look so fresh.

The two men stared at each other for perhaps a half a second before Patrick’s salon-tanned face broke into a smile of perfect teeth. “Lang! It is the great surprise.”

In the next second he held Lang in a bear hug of an embrace. Lang was thankful his friend remembered his aversion to being kissed by another man even if it was only on the cheek.

Patrick stepped back as if to confirm it was, in fact, Lang he held in his arms despite the still-visible cuts and bruises from Haiti, injuries about which Patrick was too polite to inquire. “You have come unexpectedly to Paris, yes?”

“I didn’t plan to be here until yesterday, yes.”

“But you did not let Nanette and me know.” Patrick clucked his disapproval. “We would have made the big dinner, opened the finest wines.”

“I hope we have time to go to dinner together.”

The Frenchman dropped his arms to his side, nonplussed. “Surely you have the time to make the dinner, no? Nanette will be furious if you escape Paris without seeing her.”

Lang glanced around, aware he was probably on several different cameras. “Actually, I have a bit of a problem I’d hoped you could help me with.”

“A problem?” Patrick’s bushy eyebrows arched like a pair of dancing caterpillars. “A problem of the heart, a woman, perhaps? It is a subject we French know well.”

Only then did Lang realize that Patrick didn’t know about Gurt and his instant family. “Er, not exactly. Can we go into your office to talk?”

Twenty minutes later, Lang was finishing his story as Patrick ground out the butt of a Gitane despite the no-smoking signs outside his office. The French tended to view government attempts to regulate personal conduct as unworthy of notice.

The part of the story the Frenchman found most interesting was that Lang was now living in what was domestic bliss with Gurt, a woman Patrick had more than once compared to one of Wagner’s Valkyries.

“Your recent adventure explains something I thought strange.” Patrick clicked the keyboard on his polished desktop, intent on the computer’s monitor. “Ah, here we are! Your Federal Bureau of Investigation has asked Interpol and police in a number of nations to be on the lookout for you. Is that right, lookout? ”

In view of what Gurt had told him, this should not have been a surprise, but the words still hit Lang like a punch in the stomach. “Huh?”

Patrick turned the screen so Lang could also view it. He was looking at a picture of a much younger version of himself, a photograph from his Agency days.

Underneath was a caption. Wanted for questioning by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as suspected part of criminal conspiracy to defraud and related crimes. Possibly armed and dangerous. Use extreme care. Detain.

Lang had never believed you could feel the blood drain from your face. Now he did.

Patrick used a finger to pull down a lower eyelid, the French gesture of incredulity. “So, my friend Lang is a big-time criminal, maybe like Al Capone?” He pantomimed firing a tommy gun. “No?”

Lang was far from amused. “No.”

The Frenchman became serious. “It is a measure of how badly your government wants you that they would turn on you. The question is, why?”

“There are a limited number of reasons why my government would want me and Gurt in custody,” Lang said. “The only one I can think of is they think we know something they either want to learn or don’t want to become public. As I told you, Gurt and I are the ones who gave our friend at the CIA this information about what’s going on in Haiti.”

Patrick pulled the blue box from a coat pocket and shook out another Gitane. “So, you cannot simply swear to say nothing?”

“You are in the business. Would you take someone’s word not to divulge that sort of information?”

Patrick lit the cigarette with a gold Ronson, sending a plume of blue smoke toward the ceiling. “It is not the same. In France, just like your friends the English, we would have put you under oath and warned of our official-secrets act. Violations of the act are punishable by prison. In your defense of free speech, you Americans have no such laws. That is why the most delicate of international affairs sometimes appears up on the evening news. That is also why your own people are trying to find you and Gurt.” He chuckled. “All governments are more alike than different, professing free speech while trying to limit it by one means or another.”

“I may or may not agree with your philosophy,” Lang said, “but I do need your help.”

Patrick, opened his arms wide, another Gallic gesture, this one of expansiveness. “But of course! You will stay with Nanette and me. No point in risking giving your passport to some hotel clerk to report to the authorities. But our hospitality is not the reason you are in Paris?”

“No, although I appreciate you risking problems with your government by not turning me over to mine.”

Patrick laughed as he stubbed out the Gitane. “Your CIA wants you. I believe it is the best interest of France to keep you for me to debrief on the serious situation developing in Haiti. Unless there is some formal extra, extra…”

“Extradition.”

“… extradition request, France is not obligated to meet every American demand, no?”

Lang was well aware of the glee the French took in frustrating its supposed allies, a tendency dating back to the Crusades and continuing through two world wars and the Cold War. He supposed there was a word for it. More important, for the first time, he was thankful for it.

Patrick continued. “You have told me your story but you still have not told me of your reasons for being in Paris, since you assure me they are not romantic.”

Lang stretched out in his chair and groped in his pocket, producing the small plastic bag. He dumped the button on Patrick’s desk.

Puzzled, the Frenchman turned it over in his hand. “A button?”

Lang nodded.

“With number twelve on it. Twelve what? Could it be from the uniform of a flick in the Twelfth Arrondissement?”

“I don’t think Paris cops have the specific arrondissement on their uniform buttons.”

“But it is a military-type button, no?”

Lang returned the button to the baggie and the plastic bag to his pocket. “I think so. I believe it is from the uniform of Napoleon’s Twelfth Brigade. I found it in an ancient tomb in Alexandria. Bonaparte’s savants must have employed the army to do the heavy lifting in their archaeological work. I think they, the savants, may have found, or at least thought they had found, Alexander’s tomb.”

Patrick’s interest increased visibly. “And you think the tomb’s relics are what this man in Haiti, duPaar, wants in exchange for letting the Chinese set up a military base there?”

“It’s possible. DuPaar wouldn’t be the first person to believe whatever country possessed Alexander’s mummy could never be defeated. It’s the kind of legend a deranged dictator would love. And I’m fairly certain the Chinese didn’t rob the church in Venice for Saint Mark’s remains. They thought they were getting Alexander’s.”

Patrick pursed his lips, doubtful. “Alexander the Great in Saint Mark’s tomb? That is… what do you say… a pull?”

“A stretch. But not as much as you might think.”

Lang explained the theory set forth in Chugg’s book.

By the time he had finished, Patrick was shaking another Gitane out of the box. “And you believe if you can find these…?”

“If I can find the mummy, or whatever remains of it, or prove it no longer exists, duPaar will no longer tolerate foreign forces in his country.”

Patrick took a thoughtful puff, smoke streaming from his nose. “And that would hardly endear you to the Chinese, my friend.”

“Perhaps not, but if they no longer can keep a foothold in Haiti by reason of Alexander’s mummy, remains, whatever, they have very little incentive to continue efforts to get rid of me and Gurt. Like them or not, they are practical. Likewise, if the Chinese pick up their toys and go home, the U.S. government no longer has to worry about what I might say. In fact, they can take credit for avoiding a threat.”

Patrick opened his center desk drawer, poking through it with a pen as though he anticipated he might encounter something venomous. “Nanette has a friend whose husband teaches history at the Sorbonne, a pudgy, officious little academic. Nanette tells me he has just finished editing for publication a diary of someone, Bonaparte’s personal secretary, I think. Supposedly, this lecturer in history discovered a number of previously unknown facts about the emperor. Ah! Here is his card!”

Patrick held it between thumb and forefinger, the way one might hold a dead rat by the tail.

Lang took it, scanning the spidery print. “I’m not sure what he can-”

Patrick shut the drawer with a slam. “The man may be an ass but he has won several prizes for historic research. If Bonaparte’s savants found anything relating to Alexander, he would know about it.

“I will call to let him know you will visit him.” Patrick consulted a large gold Rolex. “But first, the oysters at the Restaurant de la Place de l’Opera are superb this time of year. They arrive daily from Honfleur. Come.”

It was obvious Patrick was not going to focus on anything beyond lunch, not until he was sated with Norman mollusks.

A rural highway in Georgia

The previous evening

The men blocking the road had given the matter some thought. They had chosen a place the highway narrowed slightly just before a bridge over some nameless creek. There was no chance Gurt could pull around them without hitting the bridge abutment or going into the water itself.

She gave the latter possibility an instant’s thought. The big Hummer’s high ground clearance and four-wheel drive just might be enough to get it across the water. She dismissed the idea. She had no means of knowing how deep the water was but it was a certainty winter rains and any ice melt had not diminished its flow.

Instead, she kept her foot on the gas despite frantically waving flashlights and the echo-tinged shouting of a bullhorn.

Two questions occupied her mind as she bore down on the blockade: where was the weakest spot and did the government want her badly enough to use deadly force?

The second was answered by a burst of automatic rifle fire well over the Hummer’s roof, warning shots only. The staccato blast brought Manfred wide-awake with a yelp of fear. She had only a fraction of a second to take a hand from the wheel, reach behind the front seat and make sure he was secure in his child’s seat.

“Mommy!” he shouted in terror.

There was no time for him to say anything else.

Gurt was aware of figures scattering like a covey of frightened birds as she aimed the Hummer at the narrow space between sheriff’s cruiser and the unmarked car. Now she would find out if the massive Hummer’s superior weight would push through the lighter vehicles. With a sound of shrieking sheet metal, the Hummer split the two apart like an ax cleaving a log. The impact tried to snatch the wheel from her hand.

Then her world went white as the air bag exploded into her chest, driving her back against her seat and blinding her forward vision. Using the edge of the road she could see through the side window, she kept on the pavement as she used one hand to tug the balloonlike air bag aside. Ahead, she could see into multiprismed fractions as the windshield had become a spiderweb of refracted light.

She could feel something dragging against the right front wheel. A fender, she guessed. Manfred was howling with fear but otherwise seemed fine. A thin trail of steam was jetting from a radiator even the big grill had not been able to completely protect. A quick glance at the gauges showed engine heat creeping toward the red as oil pressure fell off. She must have ruptured a line or holed the oil pan.

She next checked the mirrors. It was too dark to see exactly what damage she had caused but it was apparently enough to prevent pursuit for the moment. She needed to put as much distance between her and the people at the bridge as possible before the engine seized.

She took the first dirt road she could see by her one remaining headlight. Cresting a small rise, she saw another, smaller unpaved path, actually no more than parallel tracks leading toward a shedlike structure.

She turned in, the scraping sound against the right front wheel louder. She stopped in front of a ramshackle wooden building, shifted into park, put on the brake and got out. She left the engine running for fear it would not restart. In the beam of the single light, she saw a tractor and an aged pickup truck. She had arrived at some farmer’s machine shed.

Shifting her attention to the Hummer, Gurt could now see the grill had been pushed back into the radiator where the spume of steam was hissing. A fender had indeed been crushed against the right front tire.

None of this interested her as much as what she could not see.

Crossing in front of the car, she opened the passenger door.

Forcing herself to ignore Manfred’s pleas to be freed from his car seat, she removed a flashlight from the glove box, knelt and began to examine the underside of the SUV.

It took her less than a minute to find a soap-bar-sized box just under the driver’s door. She recognized it as one of a number of commercially available wireless devices with GPS capabilities, the kind used by long-haul trucking companies for both security and driver location. It could be tracked by anyone with Internet access and a password. The following car Jake had spotted was only closing the rear door of a preset trap once she had entered a section of the highway with no turnoffs. Like chasing fish into the net.

But hadn’t Jake swept for just such a homing device a few hours ago? A closer look showed a wire from the contraption running forward. Although she could not see from where she was, she would bet it was connected to the Hummer’s starter, activated only by turning on the ignition. With the switch off, there was nothing to be found by the kind of sweep as Jake had performed.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the thumping of rotor blades. Her pursuers might have been disabled on the ground but they had managed to get a helicopter airborne and this locator beacon was going to lead them straight to her.

From the rate at which the sound was growing, they would be here in minutes.

Place de l’Opera, Paris

The Honfleur oysters had been as good as promised but gastronomy had hardly been on Lang’s mind. He had hardly savored the fruits de mer, a whole lobster, crab, shrimp, mussels, clam and whelk with tart shallot-vinegar sauce, warm loaf of rye bread and dairy-fresh butter.

“Only a single glass of Muscadet?” Patrick asked. “It is a marvelous vintage.”

Lang looked around the ornate, rococo dining room complete with mural on the ceiling. Most of the patrons were men in business suits. Several had much younger women with them. Lang would have bet this was not the French version of National Administrative Professionals Week.

He would have liked nothing more than to get a little tipsy on the sweet wine and retire for a nap. “Regrettably, I have a busy afternoon, what with seeing professor”-he reached into a pocket to remove the card-“Henri D’Tasse.”

Patrick had shamelessly helped himself to the last of the Muscadet, shaking the bottle slightly to make certain not a drop remained. He gave a reproachful look that reminded Lang that at table, the French do not favor discussions of anything not pertaining to the food, the wine or the cheeses. Comparisons with other dishes or meals, the last time that particular vintage had been enjoyed, which establishment did the best version. Lang had actually witnessed a couple screaming threats of divorce sit down to dinner. The conversation immediately switched to a calm debate of the relative merits of Livarot versus Pont l’Eveque cheese.

“A pity,” Patrick said. “Perhaps I might interest you in a second bottle…”

Lang held up hands of surrender. “We Americans don’t function as well as you French do after a heavy meal and several bottles of wine.”

The Frenchman shook his head. “It is because you are weaned on McDonald’s and hot dogs.”

Lang grinned, shaking his head as he pushed back from the table and signaled for the check. He reached for his wallet. “We can argue American junk foods later. I appreciate your taking my suitcase home with you.”

“No need for you to carry it about when you are staying with us anyway.”

Patrick motioned the waiter to decline Lang’s money, tendering a credit card in its place. “It is a government card. Let the people of France thank you for the valuable intelligence you have brought with you. Shall I call a taxi?”

Lang shook his head. “No thanks. I need to walk this meal off before I go to sleep.”

Patrick lowered his voice. “And to make sure you are not followed. Do you have…?”

Lang put his fist to his mouth to stifle a burp and touched his back in the place he could feel the Browning in its holster. “I have.”

Forty minutes later, Lang sat in a small Left Bank bistro on the quai d’Orsay at its intersection with boulevard Saint-Germain. The sole entree seemed to be pizza for a few American tourists. Through the moisture-streaked window, he could see a fountain with a statue of Saint Michel, and behind it, follow the pewter-colored Seine to the misty ghost of Notre Dame, its gleeful Gothic spires stabbing the belly of low gray clouds.

He was not here for the postcard scenery.

He nursed the cup of coffee that would give him license to remain here as long as he liked. He was watching, making sure he had not been followed. The use of his own passport and credit card had been an unfortunate necessity, one the Chinese would discover sooner or later. Then they would come looking for him. Happily, Paris was a very large city.

He was reluctant to give up the dry warmth of the bistro, even though a lined Burberry purchased just minutes ago promised some degree of comfort against the cold drizzle that characterizes Paris’s winters. Slipping a euro beneath his cup’s saucer, he tightened the belt of his Burberry, got up and went outside to begin the uphill trek to the Sorbonne. He passed the fifteenth-century mansion of the Abbot of Cluny, built over Roman ruins and now a museum housing the world-famous unicorn tapestries. The Luxembourg Gardens, its normally lush grounds in winter drab, abutted the Luxembourg Palace. Headquarters for the German Luftwaffe in France during World War II, it was now home to the French senate. The architecture, more Italian than French, had been dictated by Marie de’ Medici, widow of Henry IV, to remind her of her native Florence.

At the top of the hill, Lang faced the Pantheon, designed originally to be a church dedicated to Saint Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, by Louis XV in gratitude for his recovery from an illness. Unfinished by the time of the revolution and the rebellion against anything of a religious nature, the building’s facade was converted to a copy of a Roman temple and dedicated to France’s heroes.

Lang took out the professor’s card, reminding himself of the address, and began a slight descent along the left side of the building. This area had been the seat of the University of Paris since its founding as a place for sixteen poor students to study theology in the 11th century. In 1969 the university had been divided into thirteen different departments and disbursed throughout the city. Some lectures were still held in the building at 47 rue des Ecoles. From the card he held in his hand, Lang supposed history was one of them.

The street still had the slightly shabby, down-at-the-heels atmosphere common to neighborhoods where students congregate, with discount stores and bistros advertising low prices. Number 47 was a two-story brick building with little to distinguish it other than a pair of huge wooden doors. Lang entered a stone-floored foyer whose only feature was a spiral staircase. The stone steps were worn from centuries of student feet. Upstairs was a single corridor lined with doors with opaque glass above unvarnished wood.

Lang read the names in chipped black letters until he found the one marked D’TASSE. He knocked gently.

“Entrez!” came from within.

Had Lang asked a film company to create an office for an absentminded professor, they might have produced something very much like what he saw. A wooden desk was stacked high with a jumble of papers, single sheets, periodicals and notebooks. Behind it, a floor-to-ceiling bookcase sagged with the weight of dusty volumes, magazines and more papers. In the corner, an electric heater hummed in a futile effort to dispel the room’s clammy cold. At the desk was a man in a black turtleneck sweater. A sharply pointed Vandyke beard did little to minimize the chubbiness of the face. He peered at Lang though narrow slits of glasses.

“Professor D’Tasse?”

The man stood to a height that could not have greatly exceeded five feet. He extended a hand the size of a child’s. “You are Mr. Reilly, the American my good friend Patrick Louvere called me about?” he asked in accented English.

Not exactly how Patrick described the relationship.

Lang shook the hand. “Yes. He said you could help me.”

The professor sat back down. “Any friend of Patrick’s is, as you Americans say, a friend of mine.”

Lang looked over to where a straight wooden chair served as the depository for a stack of books. D’Tasse nodded and Lang moved them to the floor to take a seat after slipping out of his new coat.

“You have recently edited a diary of, I believe, Napoleon’s personal secretary?”

Behind the glasses, D’Tasse’s eyes narrowed. “What is your interest? I already have a publisher, and a number of American universities are interested. In fact, it has been previewed… is that the correct word, previewed? Yes, previewed in American University amp; College Review.” He held up a pack of printed pages. “I have had made an English-language translation to send them.”

Lang cleared his throat, giving him an added second to come up with a plausible story. He couldn’t. “Let us say I have a very practical interest in Napoleon, one I am not at liberty to divulge.”

“Ah, a secretive friend of the ever-so-secretive Patrick!” He put the papers down and leaned across the desk, resting on his elbows. “See here, Mr. Reilly, I must guard my work. It should be available to all at no cost. Protecting scholarly research from capitalistic exploitation is a duty of the academic community.”

More like academic penis envy.

D’Tasse continued. “I can tell you story after story of colleagues of mine who shared their work, only to see it for sale in some commercial publication.”

How many copies of People Magazine would the diary of Napoleon’s secretary sell?

Lang tried not to show his annoyance. Patrick knew a pompous ass when he saw one. “I can assure you, professor-”

The sentence was never finished.

The door slammed open. Lang swivelled his neck to see two men standing on the threshold, overcoat collars tuned up, caps pulled low. Lang’s first guess was that they were students, students very pissed off. Perhaps about a grade.

Then he saw the guns in their hands.

Somewhere in middle Georgia

The previous evening

The helicopter was approaching. Already Gurt could see a cone of light sweeping an adjacent field as it flew circular patterns, the standard search procedure. She guessed she had less than two minutes to do something.

She stood to reach inside the Hummer, turning off the remaining headlight. She then hurried to the rear passenger door and fumbled with the buckles on Manfred’s child seat. Whoever had designed the thing did not have a speedy exit in mind.

“Mommy, the copter’s coming,” he chortled gleefully, his fear now forgotten. “I want to see it!”

His hand in hers, she unlatched the rear compartment, letting Grumps out. He sniffed at the frozen grass, undecided where to leave his next pee mail.

Gurt pointed. “Manfred, take Grumps to that shed over there and stay inside.”

“But I want to see…”

“MACH SCHNELL!”

His mother rarely raised her voice to him but when she did, particularly in her native tongue, Manfred knew there would be no subsequent conversation.

Taking a second to make sure she was being obeyed, Gurt watched the little boy, followed by the dog, trot inside the rickety structure. Boards were missing and, she was certain, so was part of the roof but it should shelter both from the probing skyborne eye.

She started to bend down and disconnect the tracking device. No, no good. The chopper was close enough to find her without it. Better to use their own weapon against them.

Climbing back into the Hummer, she snatched off the brake and shifted into drive while watching the helicopter’s pool of light skim ever closer. Thankful the cold weather had delayed the engine’s seizing, she stepped on the gas, easing the bulky vehicle back onto the dirt road. Once there, she shifted again into park. Using her seat belt, she lashed the steering wheel to hold the car straight in the road before slipping the gearshift again to drive. She grabbed her purse by the shoulder strap and jumped free as the Hummer lumbered forward.

With a little luck, the Hummer and its tracking device would be a mile or so down the road before loss of oil and coolant brought it to a stop.

By that time, she intended to be gone.

Where and how, she was not sure.

She made it back to the shed just before the light from the helicopter swept overhead, the aircraft’s twin-turbine engines roaring malevolently. She watched as the pool of light moved away before going outside to the pickup truck. Rusty hinges complained bitterly as she opened the door and felt for the ignition switch. She was grateful the truck was an older model without the complicated antitheft mechanisms. She was fairly certain she remembered Agency training for how to direct-wire the ignition, bypassing the switch itself. What was it Lang called the procedure? Hot-wiring, that was it. Now if only the battery in this dilapidated scrap heap was working.

There was something else in the training for doing this…

Oh! Her instructor had mentioned the surprisingly high percentage of drivers who left the keys in their cars. Perhaps the same was true of pickup trucks.

A quick search found a key on the driver’s sun visor. The owner had taken for granted his vehicle would be safe at a remote spot on his own property.

Gurt leaned over to search the sky, saw nothing and inserted the key in the ignition. Her fears swam to her mind’s surface when the engine whined as it turned over. She took her foot off the gas, fearful of flooding the fuel system.

On the next try, the engine gave a wet cough, whined again and caught.

Gurt reached for the lights and caught herself just in time. Instead, she felt out the manual transmission and eased it into first gear, inching toward the shed.

In less than a minute, Manfred was beside her, Grumps on the floor at his feet.

“You forgot the car seat, Mommy!” the little boy giggled, glad to be free of the restraint. “Vati will be mad if he finds out.”

That’s a bridge I’ll jump off of when I come to it.

“Why aren’t we in the Hummer? Whose truck is this? Did you ask if you could take it? What about our clothes and stuff?”

Gurt searched the night sky. Wherever the chopper had gone, it was out of sight.

“When will we get to the farm?”

Gurt was thinking about the cars she had smashed into. Surely there were others available. But there were a number of crossing highways shortly past where she had taken the dirt road. Did they have enough men and vehicles to cover all possibilities?

“Mommy, will Vati be at the farm?”

And the truck. It would be reported stolen. But with this weather and in the winter, she guessed later rather than sooner. She wondered if the farm’s pond was deep enough to conceal it.

“Mommy, why did we leave the Hummer?”

Manfred, like most small children, tended to ask questions not so much out of curiosity as for attention. For once, Gurt found them comforting. They kept her from thinking about what could have happened.

The Sorbonne

One of the two men in the doorway gestured with his weapon, speaking French to the professor. His harsh tone gave a sharp edge to words Lang did not understand. D’Tasse’s eyes went to the manuscript he had just shown Lang.

The first man saw the glance and stepped forward to reach for it. Whoever these people were, they apparently kept up with articles in American University amp; College Review.

D’Tasse snatched the papers up, holding them out of the man’s reach. The academic “duty” he had described included resisting armed robbers? Pompous or not, the little man had guts.

The first man spoke to the second in another language, one Lang thought might be Chinese.

Motioning Lang away from the door, the second man went to help his comrade, obviously thinking Lang presented no clear threat.

That told Lang two things. First, neither was the same man who had tried to firebomb the house in Atlanta. That man would know what Lang looked like from observing before he struck. Second, there had been a real failure to communicate by the People’s Republic. These would-be thieves of academic treasure, if they were even aware of the problems Lang had caused, had not expected him here.

The first man grabbed D’Tasse by the turtleneck, the collar of his overcoat falling away. Lang was not surprised to see he was, in fact, an Asian. So was the other.

As the first man used the hand not holding the gun to drag the diminutive professor across the desk by his shirt, the other tugged on the papers D’Tasse had clinched in his fist. Lang felt powerless. If he attacked either one of the assailants, he or D’Tasse or both were likely to get shot. If he pulled out the Browning, gunfire would follow, with the same result.

Before he could decide on a course of action, the decision was taken out of his hands. With the sound of ripping fabric, D’Tasse’s shirt tore, the inertia of his resistence sending him backward and into the bookcase behind the desk. With a crash, the bookcase slammed forward, showering D’Tasse as well as the other two men in a paper avalanche.

In an instant, the Browning was in Lang’s hand. A single step brought him next to one gunman still struggling to free his feet from the pile of books. Lifting his pistol above his head, Lang brought the barrel down sharply on the gunman’s wrist.

The crunch of shattered bone merged with a howl of pain as the man’s weapon hit the floor and spun across the room.

Lang whirled to face the second man, whose gun was already coming to bear. Lang squeezed off a shot, the sound physically assaulting his ears in the confines of the small office. His target staggered toward the door as a red splotch grew on his light-colored overcoat. His weapon dangled from his hand as though forgotten. Then he turned, raising it. Before Lang could fire a second time, the man’s knees gave way and he sunk to the floor and lay still.

D’Tasse yelled something, pointing. Lang turned just in time to see the other man sprint through the doorway, one hand holding both the smashed wrist of the other and the manuscript. Go after him? What was the point? What would he do even if he caught him? Besides, there was the possibility these two intruders had left backup outside.

“My article!” D’Tasse shrieked. “Do not let him get away with it!”

Lang holstered the Browning. “He only has the English copy. What’s the problem? I doubt he’ll have much luck selling it to Playboy.”

“It is my intellectual property,” the professor said huffily. “Allowing it to get into other hands almost guarantees it will be pirated.”

A man is possibly dead, another crippled, a second ago you were staring down the muzzle of a gun and you can only think about a few pages of paper being stolen?

By now, D’Tasse had a cell phone in his hand, talking-no, shouting-into it. It was more than an even bet he had not called a friend to describe his good fortune in still being alive. Lang guessed the police would arrive shortly.

The stinking cordite fumes were bringing tears to Lang’s eyes, a man was bleeding on the floor, the office was a wreck and it was definitely time to take his leave unless he wanted to spend the rest of his time in Paris answering questions in whatever the current version of the Bastille might be. D’Tasse was so intent on yelling into his phone, he did not notice when Lang slipped one of the French copies of the manuscript into a pocket as he shrugged into his coat. Lang cautiously peeked out into what proved to be an empty corridor. The professor was so intent on making sure the police knew what had happened even before their arrival, Lang doubted he even noticed his departure.

On the first floor, Lang proceeded to a door with wc stenciled on it under the standard figure of a man. Inside, he took a stall and removed the Browning from its holster, transferring it to the pocket of his Burberry. If he had to use it, he was not going to have time to remove his overcoat.

He had not gone two blocks before a white police car wailed past, blue light flashing, in the opposite direction, followed only moments later by two more. A half block farther, half a dozen police carrying automatic weapons were walking up the hill, checking out every business as they came. A quick glance told him he was the only pedestrian in sight. Had the professor given a description of him?

Abruptly turning in the opposite direction would attract attention. Lang spied one of those street flower vendors common in European cities in the summer. Where this one had obtained her inventory this time of year was a mystery, perhaps North Africa. But the flowers’ source was not what interested Lang. To the flower seller’s surprise and delight, Lang purchased the first dozen roses he saw, paying full price without the haggling that takes place with those who do business on the streets.

Just as a pair of cops reached him, Lang continued the way he had been going, roses in hand. He drew no more than a cursory glance. A man carrying a handful of flowers along a Paris street was hardly a man escaping from just shooting and possibly killing someone. He was a man on his way home to please his wife. Or more likely at this time of day, his mistress.

24H rue Norvins, Montmartre, Paris

That evening

Lang remembered Patrick’s third-story walk-up flat. On the city’s tallest hill, it was equidistant from Paris’s last vineyard, also on the hillside, and Sacre-Coeur, with its odd, ovoid domes. The church, built in the late nineteenth century with private funds, was visible from nearly anywhere in the city.

Montmartre had been a center for Paris’s artistic community for two hundred years. Gericault and Corot had painted here at the beginning of the nineteenth century. On any day it was not raining, almost every corner had its impromptu gallery displaying everything from copies of old masters to photographically real scenes from the city to contemporary blobs of undecipherable meaning.

Patrick’s wife, Nanette, had chosen the area, Lang suspected, with her husband’s less-than-enthusiastic agreement. An artist herself, she had spent her earlier years here before her talent brought her to the attention of one of France’s largest advertising firms, where she had put her ability to work in a commercially successful if less-inspiring career.

Since French law strictly mandated a thirty-five-hour-maximum workweek and four weeks minimum vacation, she still had ample time to paint, as evidenced by the artwork decorating the walls of the apartment. She embraced Lang at the door, thanked him profusely for the dozen red roses and insisted on opening a bottle of reasonably good champagne in his honor.

Lang watched her pour two flutes. She was almost as tall as Gurt, slender with a face slightly too narrow, a feature emphasized by shoulder-length dark hair that he knew she wore in a chignon with dark business suits for work.

Stem glass in hand, Lang inspected the paintings that covered every available bit of wall space, murmuring appreciation of each. As usual, he silently marveled at the ability of Europeans, particularly those dwelling in large cities, to live in spaces Americans would consider claustrophobic. Two small bedrooms and a single closet of a bath opened off of a living room/dining area of less than three hundred square feet. Standing at the stove, no part of the kitchen was out of reach. Yet Nanette, Patrick and their son, Gulliam, seemed quite comfortable.

Gulliam. The boy would be about the same age as Lang’s nephew, Jeff, had he not…

Don’t go there. You have a son, a wife and life is good.

“Patrick will be late,” Nanette announced in flawless English. “Something to do with a shooting at the Sorbonne. A refill?”

Lang held out his glass, saying nothing.

He went to the sofa, his bed for the night, and shuffled through the pockets of the Burberry he had tossed there upon entering the apartment. “While we’re waiting, I wonder if you could translate something for me?”

“I will try.”

Lang handed her the French version of D’Tasse’s work. “Thanks. If you don’t mind, just read it to me in English.”

She went to a desk and took out a pair of glasses. Lang did not recall her using them before. But then, he had never seen her read anything other than a menu. He supposed vanity had prevented her from wearing them in public.

Leaning over to catch the light from a lamp on a table, she studied the first page before she began. She had been reading for only about five minutes before Patrick’s key rattled in the lock and he entered, overcoat draped over one arm.

“Sorry I am late.” He went the armoire against the far wall and carefully hung up his coat before giving Lang a meaningful look. “There was a shooting at the Sorbonne this afternoon. D’Tasse’s office. The police wanted to question you.”

“Question Lang?” Nanette asked in confusion. “Surely they don’t think…”

Patrick shut the armoire’s doors. “Wanted is the past tense, no? It is a matter of national security, since we believe the victim is employed by the Guoanbu.”

Lang guessed the French had a picture-ID system like the Agency’s.

Patrick continued. “It is a matter for the DGSE, not the local police.”

Lang wondered how much weight Patrick had thrown around to accomplish that.

“The Guo-what?” Nanette asked.

“Chinese state security,” Patrick said, taking the champagne bottle from the ice bucket and inspecting the label. “Strange. They wanted an article written by a professor, something about Bonaparte. And were willing to take it at gunpoint.”

Nanette looked from the manuscript in her hand to Lang and back again. “Could they not simply read it when it was published?”

Patrick was pouring into a flute. “We believe they did not want to wait until the article became public. We do not know why. The inscrutable Oriental, no?”

Nanette held up the papers in her hand, puzzled. “Why would Chinese want…?”

Patrick forgot the champagne. “Is that it? Is that the article on Bonaparte by your friend Henri D’Tasse?”

Even more confused. “Yes, yes it is. I was translating it for Lang.”

Patrick sat on the sofa, glass in one hand, the other fishing for the box of Gitanes. “Please, start at the beginning and read it to both of us.”

Twenty minutes later, she finished.

Lang was staring into space. “He left his most prized possession to his secretary’s namesake? Who would that be? And what was it he left?”

Patrick held up the champagne bottle, ruefully noting it was empty. “There is a computer on the table in our bedroom. The answer to your first question could be sought on Google. But first there is the matter of dinner. On the other side of Sacre-Coeur there is a bistro with the best moules frites, mussels and fried potatoes, in Paris. We can easily walk there.”

Jesus, does this guy ever get tired of seafood?

Seated at a small and dimly lit table, Lang barely noticed the muted hubbub around him. His thoughts were on Saint Denis’ diary. What could Napoleon have had that was so precious to him? The obvious answer was the contents of the box that kept reoccurring in the diary’s frequently disjointed passages, the box that was brought from Egypt, was taken to Haiti by Leclerc and returned by his widow. But what was in the box? Alexander’s mummy-or what was left of it? Of everything Napoleon possessed, that would be a macabre favorite. Was its present location somehow revealed by his secretary? The Chinese must have thought so; otherwise what would they want with a soon-to-be-published scholarly article?

And Saint Denis’ namesake.

A son?

Lang stopped, a mussel speared on a fork halfway to his mouth.

Wait a second.

The diary did not mention a namesake; he had just assumed that was what was meant. The words were in your name. Was the distinction important?

“You do not like the moules?” Patrick asked, interrupting Lang’s thoughts.

Lang ate the one on his fork. “No, er, I mean, yes. They’re quite good.”

Nanette studied Lang’s face. “I think perhaps he has… what is the phrase? Something on his mind.”

“I was thinking about Saint Denis’ diary and what Napoleon meant when he said he was leaving his most precious possession.” He paused a moment. “What does the name Saint Denis mean to you?”

“It is the location of the Paris football stadium,” Patrick answered immediately. “The Pomme de Pain there has closed, to be replaced by a McDo’s…”

A popular version of French fast food, a sandwich chain, had been replaced by McDonald’s, “McDo” in Parisian slang. Lang wanted to head off a discussion of American fast food, which the French blamed for, among other things, the current world economic problems, global warming and the collapse of Western civilization. In spite of the antagonism, KFC, Subway and Pizza Hut, to name a few, attracted a large following in Paris.

“The football stadium,” Lang repeated. “Is Saint Denis the street address?”

“It is the area where it is located,” Nanette interjected, “a suburb north of Paris. It is also the location of a very old church, the one where all but three of the kings of France after the tenth century were buried in the crypt.”

“Could Napoleon have left his prized possession to a church?” Lang asked skeptically. “I mean, the revolution was anticlerical.”

“It was he who returned the building to the church. The revolutionaries had confiscated all of them,” Nanette said.

Patrick used a paper napkin to wipe the mussels’ juice from his lips. “Not only did they confiscate the basilica of Saint Denis, they opened all the royal tombs in the crypt and dumped the remains into a common pit. Later, when the basilica was restored to the Catholic Church, it was impossible to tell which was which. The various relics went into a common ossuary.” He glowered at Lang and Nanette as though this disposed of the matter and there was no need to continue this breach of French dinner-table etiquette. “Now, who would like another glass of wine?”

Unabashed, Lang asked, “So none of the kings are in their tombs?”

Patrick looked at his wife, daring her to answer.

She did anyway. “Not quite so. Ironically, the last two Bourbons are the only ones who have their own resting places today.”

“I thought Louis XVI was dumped in an unmarked grave with his wife, Marie Antoinette, following about nine months later,” Lang said.

“True,” Nanette responded. “Their bodies, along with about twenty-eight hundred other victims of the guillotine, were disposed of in that way.”

“Then how did they wind up in Saint Denis?”

“A lawyer, a secret royalist, lived nearby. He saw both the headless royal bodies dumped there and marked the places in his mind. Later, he bought the little garden where they had been treated so rudely and planted trees over the site. When Louis XVIII came to power after Bonaparte was defeated the first time, he had the bodies removed to Saint Denis and a monument erected in January of 1815. There were only skulls and a few bones and part of a lady’s garter left because the bodies had been covered with quicklime.”

Patrick put down his fork, disgusted. “This talk of bodies and guillotines does not go well with dinner, no? Let us discuss it afterward.”

Lang thought a moment, either not hearing or ignoring his friend. “A monument after a mass grave? That would be a return from anonymity, would it not? And Saint Denis, the church, would be ‘in the name of’ the guy writing the diary. And what better place for Alexander’s mummified body, or whatever is left of it, than a crypt?”

He stood, forgetting his half-eaten meal. “How long will it take to get to this church?”

Patrick looked up at him as though Lang had uttered some particularly vile blasphemy by suggesting the meal not be finished. “The church would be closed by now. Sit, enjoy your dinner.”

Another thought made Lang sit. “But how could Napoleon put anything there? He was on Elba until the spring of 1815.”

“He had many followers eager to do his bidding, as witnessed by how quickly he raised an army after his escape,” Nanette offered. “And he returned to Paris straight from Elba, presumably with full access to Saint Denis or any other church in the city. But do not consider going to Saint Denis at night. The area is not safe.”

Lang was on his feet again. “You can bet the Chinese aren’t worried about safety. We have to get whatever is in that church before they figure out what Napoleon meant.”

He signaled frantically for the check. “I can’t wait.”

With a sigh of resignation, Patrick stood. “And I cannot allow you to go to the Saint Denis area alone and at night.”

2 rue de Strasbourg

Basilique Saint Denis

An hour later

Stopping only for Patrick to go by his apartment and retrieve two flashlights and his PAMAS G1 with two extra clips of ammunition, it still seemed to Lang that the Metro took forever to deliver them to Saint Denis. The station was one of the few he had seen that was dirty, littered, and streaked with graffiti, a preview of the shabby neighborhood it served. The small number of passengers disembarking the train here appeared to be of North African descent, the women with heads covered and the men bearded.

Outside, the buildings had the dispirited look of public housing. Behind chain-link screens, the few store windows displayed cheap household appliances against backgrounds stark enough to proclaim any hope of good fortune had long since departed. Scruffy cars were parked along the curb, many with flat tires indicating they had taken up permanent residence there. Lang immediately noticed the occasional pedestrians traveling in groups, who glared resentfully at him and Patrick.

He was grateful for Patrick’s company.

Turning the corner around a particular grim high-rise decorated with hanging bedsheets and other laundry despite the sporadic drizzle, they faced the Basilica of Saint Denis. It was like discovering a prize rose growing in a weed patch. Lit by a battery of floodlights, a single tower reached heavenward, oblivious to its dowdy surroundings. The church was a pleasing combination of Gothic and Romanesque built of what Lang guessed was white limestone, burnished to gold by the surrounding lights.

“Is beautiful, no?” Patrick asked. “But what is your plan to get inside?”

“Get inside?” Lang asked. “They lock the church?”

“My friend, in this neighborhood, that which is not securely locked at night has been looted by morning.” He pointed to the left portal, two massive doors secured by a heavy chain and large padlock. “I think it would take some time to get through that.”

Lang fished in his pocket, producing a ring of keys. “Then we’ll just unlock it.”

“You have the key…?”

Lang held one up. At first glance, it resembled any ordinary key. Closer inspection revealed a series of bumps along one edge.

“A bump key. Most people have no idea how simply the normal pin-tumbler lock can be defeated. Watch.”

Lang approached the huge doors, noting with surprise the ornate carvings on the stone frame were signs of the zodiac, more pagan than religious. Holding the big padlock in one hand, he inserted the key and then sharply rapped the bottom of the lock against the wooden door. There was an metallic snap and the lock sprung open.

Patrick was looking over Lang’s shoulder. “That is a very convenient thing to have in your pocket.”

“Us former Boy Scouts come prepared. Now, lets get inside and close the doors before someone gets suspicious and calls the cops.”

Patrick chuckled dryly. “It would take more than a suspicion to get the flics here at night. Even so, they will not come unless there are a number of them. The residents of Saint Denis do not like policemen.”

Once inside, Lang reached through the cracked-open doors and managed to drape the chain back into position along with the open lock. It would require a detailed examination for a passerby to notice the church was no longer secured.

The outside lights shone through huge, airy windows, creating a chiaroscuro of lofty arches soaring far above and columns with the circumference of redwoods marching in soldierly ranks. Lang regretted the outside lights did little to illuminate what he was certain would be exquisite stained-glass windows.

Their footsteps echoing against the marble floor, the pair made their way past candles flickering in front of side chapels from which pained saints suffered a variety of martyrdoms.

At last, Patrick tugged on Lang’s sleeve. “The entrance to the crypt.”

The ambient light from outside created as much shadow as illumination. Still, no matter what Patrick had said about the indifference of the police, Lang hesitated to use his flashlight for fear someone outside might see the flicker. Extending a hand toward Patrick, he felt an iron rail about waist high. Behind it, Patrick seemed to be sinking into the floor. Only when the Frenchman was beneath the level of the church did he turn on his light, revealing a set of steps that ended somewhere in darkness.

“It is OK to use the torch here,” Patrick said. “The crypt has no windows.”

As Lang descended, he could feel a dampness and chill that made him pull his new overcoat more tightly about him. There was the smell that he associated with places where there was little air circulation, a mustiness reminiscent of dust and cobwebs. The sound of outside traffic vanished; the stillness was like a tangible curtain between present and past, demanding any speech be in whispers.

Straight ahead, a low wooden door emerged from the gloom. There was no knob, only a rusted metal plate with a handle about two feet from the floor, below which its ancient keyhole yawned for a key far larger than the one in Lang’s pocket.

“Someone’s afraid the occupants will escape?” Lang asked in surprise.

“To keep out vandals?” Patrick suggested.

“Locking the barn door two hundred years after the horse is gone,” Lang muttered.

Patrick pushed on the iron plate with no result. Then he pulled the handle, surprising both himself and Lang when the door opened an inch or so toward them. Another tug and the door groaned on its hinges and opened another few inches. In seconds, the entrance stood open.

“Look.” Patrick was pointing with his flashlight’s beam. “The key is on the inside.”

Lang contemplated the iron key. The part outside the lock was nearly a foot long. “Either the residents insist on their privacy, or someone wanted to make sure the original key didn’t get swiped by some souvenir hunter.”

Inside, he played his light to his left. Like icebergs in an Arctic sea of darkness, sarcophagi floated in random groupings. Most displayed recumbent likenesses of the original occupant. One, a large mausoleum, depicted a well-dressed royal couple contemplating their nude likenesses. Many had been chipped, cracked or otherwise defaced, the handiwork of revolutionary vandals two centuries past.

It was clear the crypt, like the church itself, had been built in stages. He and Patrick had descended into the older portion, as evidenced by relatively crude barrel vaults. A short distance away, slender Gothic arches opened into dark emptiness.

The previous resting places of Charles Martel and Saint Louis immediately attracted Lang’s attention. He was trying to find an angle with his light that would make the words carved below the latter’s effigy legible.

“We are not here for a history lesson,” Patrick hissed. “We are here to look at this one.”

The tomb of Louis XVI and his queen stood in the beam from Patrick’s light. It was easily identifiable. All other likenesses were prone, as though sleeping. The unfortunate Bourbon monarchs knelt in prayer, the queen facing Louis’ left side. The statuary was placed on a plinth about two feet in height so that even in prayer, both faces were roughly even with the viewer’s.

Patrick ran the beam of his light over the carved marble. “There is nothing here but dust, no?”

Kneeling, Lang was studying the base of the plinth. “There is dust, yes.” He rubbed his hand across the base’s surface, leaving a deep furrow. “And we can’t tell much in this light.”

Patrick’s impatience was showing. “We can come back in the daytime when the lights are on down here.”

“The Chinese may not wait that long.”

The Frenchman sniffed his disagreement. “I do not understand why Bonaparte would have played such games, hiding things in churches.”

Lang was running a hand over the effigy of Louis. So far, all he had produced were dust motes that seemed to sparkle in the light of the flashes. “Remember, the whole time he was on Elba, his wife, the Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria, the woman he divorced Josephine for in order to have an heir, refused to return his letters. He had not even seen his son, who was, by the time of his escape, what? Four or five?”

“So?”

“I’m guessing, but I’d say Napoleon knew he was soon going to be fighting the combined armies of Europe and maybe his chances weren’t so good. For sure he knew that after his escape from Elba, any future exile would be much harsher, no thousand men to accompany him. In fact, he may have guessed he would be killed.”

Patrick began to show a glimmer of interest. “Killed?”

“Hair taken from Napoleon’s corpse was tested, oh, maybe ten years ago. There were definite traces of arsenic, probably administered in gradual doses.”

“You can never trust the English.”

“Perhaps. But also perhaps Napoleon wanted to make sure his prized possession was delivered to the son he never saw again. What better way than to hide it from those who wanted to destroy every trace of the French emperor, trust it to a friend to deliver at the appropriate time. A friend who for whatever reason was unable to do so.”

“But a secret hiding place in a church?” Patrick was skeptical. “Why not just give this… this whatever to someone to deliver?”

“Perhaps that wasn’t possible at the time. Besides, Napoleon was a master of the dramatic. You will recall, he took the emperor’s crown into his own hands to place it on his head himself.”

“And you believe this treasured item to be the mummy of Alexander? Hardly a gift for a small boy, yes?”

“A small boy in whose favor the emperor of France abdicated after Waterloo.”

“But, my friend, Napoleon II never ruled.”

Lang was examining the stature of Marie Antoinette. “His father could never have known that would be the case before being banished to Saint Helena. What better gift to leave his heir than the remains, and hence a legitimate claim to the legacy of the greatest warrior that ever lived?”

Patrick shivered, whether from the increasing cold or boredom, Lang couldn’t tell. “All a very interesting history lesson. But this crypt is not a schoolroom. You have examined the statues and they have no secret, yes? Let us go before we die of pneumonia from the cold.”

It was a tempting suggestion. Lang stepped back to survey the carving in its entirety. “What were Napoleon’s exact words? Something about ‘on the heel of a return from anonymity’?”

“It is but a figure of speech, it…”

Lang was circling the memorial. “The heel. You can’t see Marie Antoinette’s heels; they’re under the folds of her dress. One of Louis’ heels is covered by his cape.”

Patrick’s bored expression, or what Lang could see in the reflection of his flashlight, seemed to change. “You do not think.. .”

Reaching across the effigies, Lang grasped the heel of the marble shoe. “I can feel a crack between it and the rest…”

He tried to twist it clockwise. The other direction produced a sharp click.

Patrick jumped back in surprise. “Merde!”

At his feet, a tray had popped open from the base of the plinth.

Lamar County, Georgia

The early-morning hours of the previous evening

Gurt was having a problem keeping awake. On the interstate, the temptation would have been either to pull off for a few minutes’ snooze at a rest stop or visit one of the fast-food joints that lined the exits for a dose of caffeine. Either would have been a mistake. No doubt the FBI had wasted no time getting an all-points bulletin out for reports of any sightings of her, quite likely with the usual “Believed to be armed and dangerous” the Bureau routinely added for effect.

The thought of herself, Manfred and Grumps as some latter-day Dillinger Gang made her smile in spite of her weariness. Or more appropriate, Bonnie and Clyde. Weeks earlier, Gurt had become enraptured by a series on the History Channel dealing with the Depression-era gangsters: Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, Ma Barker, Al Capone, as well as Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde. They all seemed much more interesting than their law-enforcing nemeses. Melvin Purvis and Eliot Ness were simply colorless, boring men. What kind of an American mother named her son Melvin, anyway?

Those criminals had made the FBI what it was today, had forced reforms in law enforcement. But the 1930s Bureau was nothing like the sophisticated, highly technical machine with which Gurt had cooperated a couple of times while with the Agency.

Now, millions, if not billions, of dollars worth of hightech equipment was being used to track her down. It would have been intimidating had she not realized that as long as she kept away from public places, did not use her cell phone or credit cards, she would he untraceable, no matter how many high-resolution satellites circled overhead, how many helicopters searched the highways or how many listening devices probed the ether for any communication from her.

As long as he has a well-prepared hole, the rabbit always has the advantage over the hound. And this hole had been prepared to hide from enemies from her and Lang’s past, should they reappear. A simple wood-shake cabin of no more than fifteen hundred square feet housed a cache of at least a month’s food. A computer covertly routed through any number of others, a tract of land in middle-Georgia farm country owned by an untraceable offshore corporation. A series of well-hidden remote cameras set off by motion. Gurt had long tired of watching the parade of deer, beaver, fox and other creatures who regularly appeared on the realtime show, but she realized its potential value.

Better than any electronics was the man who operated a small farm on the adjacent property, Larry Henderson. As a former marijuana grower whom Lang had defended from federal prosecution a few years ago, Larry not only was highly suspicious of strangers, particularly trespassing strangers, he was intensely loyal to Lang and knew how to handle the variety of firearms he owned. Plus, he and his wife pretty much knew whenever a new face popped up on the local scene.

In Lamar County, he was better than Jake’s security service.

Dillinger notwithstanding, Gurt wasn’t going to be caught at Chicago’s Biograph Theater or its middle-Georgia equivalent.

At last, the truck’s headlights picked up the first of the series of NO TRESPASSING signs that delineated Larry’s property. The next driveway, nearly obscured by brush intentionally left uncut, would be the turn into the farm and the end of searching the sky and rearview mirror. Tomorrow, she would dispose of the truck and ask Larry to go into nearby Barnesville for any needed supplies.

For the moment, all she wanted was not to wake Manfred when she carried him inside and to get some sleep herself. Both the late hour and tension had drained her.

For the moment, she was safe.

Basilique Saint Denis

Lang shone his flashlight on the tray that had popped out of the plinth. “Spring release?”

Recovered from his initial shock, Patrick knelt for a closer look. “Hardly room for a mummy.”

Lang squatted, placing the light in his mouth while he used both hands to reach into the tray, and removed a wooden box. “If these are Alexander’s remains, I suspect it’s less than the full body.” He examined the metalwork. “The hinges are rusted shut.” He touched a keyhole. “And there’s no key. I don’t have anything with me that would open it. We may have to just force it…”

He cut the sentence short as both men froze. There was no mistaking the sound of footsteps above.

“Do you think the Chinese have already figured out what Bonaparte meant?”

Lang pushed the tray closed and was searching for the best hiding place. “At this hour, I doubt we’re hearing early arrivals for mass.”

Nearest the stairs, he spotted the congregation of tombs he had first seen, circled almost like a wagon train under attack. From the brief glance before cutting off his light, he fixed the position of the older part of the crypt, that closest to the staircase, in his mind.

He tucked the box under his left arm. With his right, he slipped the Browning from its holster at his back.

With Patrick’s hand on his shoulder, Lang groped his way toward the place he had chosen. The thin light filtering through the basilica’s windows from above spilled down the stairs, outlining vague shadows that had equal chances of being merely ethereal or hard, unforgiving marble. With the hand holding the Browning extended in front of him, Lang found something, a tomb, and pulled Patrick down beside him.

They had no time to ascertain just where they were before footsteps echoed from the stone stairs. One, two, three, four shapes drifted down the stairs to merge with the darkness like specters descending into Hades. There were muted whispers, and two lights swept the gloom. Lang ducked, expecting to be caught like one of those unfortunate World War II British bomber pi lots pinned to the sky by a German searchlight. One beam swept over the sepulcher, painting the adjacent dusty sarcophagus with a brilliance it had not had in over a millennium. Lang got a flash of a reclining woman, arms crossed over her breast, with an animal, a dog, at her feet, before the light passed by.

Next to him, Patrick was attempting to rise up enough to see. Lang tugged at his arms. Lips next to his friend’s ear, Lang whispered, “Wait.”

He had a good idea what the Frenchman was thinking: four men, undoubtedly armed, with possibly a couple more keeping watch in the basilica above. Not good odds. If the undone lock on the church’s left door had not tipped the intruders off someone had been here before them, if they had entered by one of the two other portals, something else would. Lang tried to think. Had he unintentionally left some other sign of his and Patrick’s presence?

Too late to worry now.

Relying more on sound than sight, Lang guessed the newcomers had divided, two men with each light, as they edged deeper into the crypt. For the moment there was nothing to do but cower in the darkness amid the group of tombs.

Slowly, the lights passed them by, traveling farther into the necropolis. Then there was a cry, something in a language Lang could not understand. Daring to raise his head above the stone figures, he saw both lights illuminating the Bourbon monument. Four men surrounded the statuary, the reflected light revealing Asian faces animated in conversation.

Lang gave Patrick a gentle shove. Now was the time to get out of here.

Patrick understood. Lang could see his dim outline on hands and knees, ruining his impeccably tailored suit, as he made for the exit. Lang followed, the box in one hand, Browning in the other.

They had almost reached the open door when Patrick blindly smacked his head on someone’s tomb, eliciting a grunt of pain. Had the accident happened a split second earlier, the chances were the sound would have gone unnoticed, but it came at that precise moment when the men surrounding Louis and Marie Antoinette suddenly went quiet.

Both lights caught Patrick and Lang at the door.

Both men made a dive for the opening as one. In the confined space, two muzzle flashes were instantaneous, with the sound of gunshots close enough for the ears to feel as well as hear. Lang’s cheek stung from a marble splinter.

Both he and Patrick rolled through the doorway as bullets thumped into the door itself. Reaching up, Lang reached back to snatch the key from the lock. For an instant, it would not come loose, a delay that brought another volley whining over his head. With a frantic twist, he freed the heavy key and kicked the door shut.

On his back, Lang reached up again, this time to insert the key on the outside. With surprising ease, it turned as the bolt went into place and several more bullets hit but failed to penetrate the thick wood.

Lang took a deep breath and gave thanks to medieval man. First for being so much shorter than his contemporary cousins that a keyhole was only a modern arm’s length from the floor, and second, that his builders chose the stoutest of oak for doors, even if they were so low he had had to stoop to get through.

Standing, Lang turned to the steps. In front of him, Patrick was frozen. There were two men at the top with weapons extended.

Boulevard Carnot, Departement of Seine-Saint-Denis

Moments earlier

Gardien de la paix Jules Carrier had drawn the short straw careerwise. Only two years out of the police academy, he could expect to be placed on the eight-hour shift from 2300 hours until 0700, the hours least popular with those with more seniority. He would not have expected to be partnered with a stagiaire -intern, one-year graduate-as a partner, though. Almost always, the younger officers were paired with more experienced partners. But then, nothing went normally for those unfortunate enough to be assigned to Saint Denis, one of the three Paris suburbs that came under the jurisdiction of the Paris Prefecture of Police.

Saint Denis was the black hole of police work, both figuratively and literally. Populated largely by immigrants from France’s former North African colonies, the district was heavily Muslim. Some of its residents practiced the extreme customs of their religion, such as female genital mutilation, intersectarian murder, honor killing and tribal feuds. Then there were the commercial enterprises such as meth labs, heroin dealing and fencing stolen goods. Lesser problems involved slaughtering of goats on public streets, dumping refuse on the sidewalks and setting fire to establishments that sold alcohol. There were almost-annual riots involving the burning of automobiles, smashing the few windows not secure behind steel curtains and automatic weapon fire at anyone unlucky enough to be in uniform when the trouble started. Jules was certain law-abiding, peaceful Muslims existed too, sometimes they just seemed outnumbered in and around Saint Denis.

Only a fool of a police officer would volunteer for duty here, and only a short-lived fool would wander far from the well-lighted main streets unless he had a substantial and well-armed force with him. Even the army was hesitant to venture into the narrow streets and alleys. The general, if unspoken, opinion around the Paris prefecture was that it was far wiser to make only a gesture of police presence around the perimeter of the worst areas than to risk the lives of good officers in a vain attempt to establish order in a place that was more war zone than neighborhood.

That was why Jules and his partner Lavon had chosen a relatively peaceful spot across from the Hotel Sovereign to sit in their diminutive Peugeot 307 and drink coffee, hoping to pass the shift without someone throwing a brick or worse through the car’s windshield. They paid no attention to the car’s radio when the first report of gunfire crackled through the airwaves. Why should they? Hardly a night passed without some son of Islam taking a shot at another. Narcotics deal gone bad, perceived or actual insult, home invasion. You name it, the provocations for murder and mayhem by and against the locals were endless.

A second report followed the first.

Jules was getting uneasy. What if they received orders to investigate? Walking the streets of this district in a police uniform was tantamount to pinning a target on your back.

Even relatively inexperienced, Lavon knew that much. “Perhaps we should find an automobile accident in a far location or take our break now?”

Good idea.

“We can get fresh coffee over there at the hotel,” Jules suggested, reaching for the door handle. “Tell the prefecture we will be on break.”

It was as if the radio operator could hear. Her voice called their unit number.

“… at the basilica, multiple gun shots coming from the basilica. Proceed at once.”

Too late.

Jules slowly picked up the microphone, toying with the idea of claiming the message was breaking up. Probably no use. A dozen other units would have heard it.

“Backup?” he asked hopefully.

The radio assured him it was on the way.

But the church was only a kilometer or so south of their position, minutes away. The last thing Jules wanted was to be the first to arrive at a darkened church where some zealous Muslim fundamentalist was shooting up the place of the infidel.

“Check the weapons,” he instructed Lavon.

That should afford a minute or two’s delay.

The weapons consisted of each man’s SIG Sauer SIG Pro 2022, which had within the past year replaced the standard Beretta, a Taser and a Browning twelve-gauge pump shotgun with a choice of rubber bullets or number-two buckshot. Lavon confirmed the firearms were loaded and the Taser charged.

By this time, radio chatter confirmed at least two other cars really were on the way. Waiting at the scene for their arrival before entering the basilica would not only be prudent, it would be standard procedure.

Backup or not, Jules still had a bad feeling as he turned on the siren and pulled away from the curb.

Basilique Saint Denis

Even in the watery light filtering through the church’s windows, Lang could see the two men at the top of the stairs were Asian. He could also see there was no cover. Unless he and Patrick could sink through the stone floor, they were at the others’ mercy. As one, Lang and Patrick dropped their pistols and raised their hands.

Lang fully expected to be shot where he stood.

The eyes of the taller of the two Asians flicked to the box in Lang’s hand. He pointed and said something in what Lang guessed was a Chinese dialect.

His companion, gun trained on Lang’s forehead, took a step closer. “The box,” he said in understandable if accented English. “He wants the box.”

Lang knew Patrick was thinking the same thing: if Lang could use the box to lure either man close enough…

Lang held it up. “Come and get it.”

Even in the poor light it was obvious the English speaker’s smile did not reach his eyes. “If I have to take it from your corpse, I will do so. Now, reach up the stairs as far as you can and place the box there.”

Shit, a professional.

Lang hesitated.

The non-English speaker’s finger was tightening on the trigger.

“OK, OK!”

Just as Lang leaned forward to comply with the demand, there was a series of loud thumps on the door behind him. The men in the crypt had heard voices and guessed what had happened.

“First, do as I have said. Then you will unlock that door.”

Lang felt Patrick’s elbow gently jab him in the ribs. The similarity of training between the Agency and the French organization had been a topic of discussion between the two friends in times past. Lang could only hope there was a concurrence in this situation.

Stretching forward, he placed the box on the next-to-top step before slowly straightening up.

“And now the door.”

Lang turned to fumble with the key. He didn’t know if Patrick could see in the poor light, but he winked anyway.

The door swung open quickly, probably because one or more of the men inside was pushing on it. In unison, Patrick and Lang stepped back as though to make room.

As the last two men, guns in hand, came through the opening, Lang and Patrick stepped behind them, grabbing each with one arm locked around the neck, the other holding his opponent’s gun arm. Shielded by their captives’ bodies from the weapons of the others, both Patrick and Lang slammed the hands with the guns against the steps’ iron railing.

The pistols clattered to the stone floor.

The first two men through the doorway turned, trying to maneuver into a position to get a clear shot without hitting their comrades. The stairwell was too narrow. The man Lang held was struggling, and Lang knew he could not hold him indefinitely. At some point he and Patrick would have to recover either their own guns or those that had been dropped by the men they held.

And there was no way to do that without exposing themselves to the fire from the men at the top of the stairs.

Patrick cursed as his man broke partially free, giving the men at the top of the stairs a target. Before they could react, Patrick made a dive for the small space at the bottom of the stairwell just as the sound of a pair of shots smashed against Lang’s eardrums.

Patrick grunted in surprise. “ Merde! ”

With Patrick exposed, Lang released his man, raising his own hands in hopes there would be no more shooting. In the cramped confines of the staircase, even a ricochet could be deadly.

Lang sensed uncertainty in the two men at the top of the steps. The English speaker bent over, reaching for the box.

Then the lights went on.

For the instant it took for eyes to adjust, Lang and the Chinese froze in blindness. Lang shoved the man he had let loose forward, at the same time stooping to reach for the spot where he thought he had seen someone’s weapon on the bottom step seconds before.

By the time he came up with it, the two at the top of the stairs were gone and the other four were scampering up the steps.

Shouts echoed from the arches overhead, magnified by the natural acoustics built into medieval churches. The four men who had been in the crypt were at various levels on the stairs. The two at the top fired toward the front of the basilica before turning as though to make a run for it.

The one in the lead jerked and fell as a burst of automatic-weapon fire reverberated throughout the cavernous church. The remaining man at the top dropped his pistol and flung his arms into the air. Behind him, the remaining two made a quick decision and raised their arms, too.

Pushing by Lang, Patrick climbed the stairs, his right arm grasping his left shoulder. It was only when he came out of the shadows of the stairwell that Lang noticed the left shoulder of his friend’s suit was darkened with something wet. A splatter of crimson on the marble floor told him Patrick had been hit.

Following Patrick, Lang emerged into the floor of the cathedral. Between him and the portal through which he had entered were six police. Two held short, stubby automatic weapons, another was pointing a shotgun. The remaining three were in a two-handed shooting stance, pistols aimed in Lang’s direction. At least two of them were too nervous for Lang’s comfort. All were shouting commands in French.

No interpretation needed. He dropped the pistol and raised his hands.

“My inside pocket,” Patrick said, gritting his teeth against obvious pain. “Get out my wallet.”

“You’re hit.”

“Yes, yes. And we are both likely to get shot if you do not show them my identification.”

Lang removed the ID wallet from his friend’s inside coat pocket. It was slippery with blood. Moving slowly with the wallet held up for inspection, Lang handed it to the officer who looked as though he might be in his early twenties, the oldest of the group. The other five edged closer, dividing attention between what their elder was holding and their prisoners.

“DGSE?” the cop asked, confused as to what a member of France’s counterespionage agency would be doing in the Basilica of Saint Denis in the early-morning hours.

A brief exchange in French followed. From Patrick’s increasing irritation and the few words Lang understood, Lang gathered the policeman was asking questions and Patrick was invoking state security.

He hoped someone here understood English. “In case you haven’t noticed, this man has been shot. Can we get him to a hospital before he bleeds to death?”

Patrick, his face blanched, was holding on to the stair’s railing for support. He rattled off what sounded like commands before translating. “I told them to find the two missing Chinese.” He looked around. “And where is the box? What happened to the box?”

Lang scooped it up from the floor, holding it aloft like a trophy. Patrick did not see. He had collapsed on the floor.

Hopital Cognacq-Jay

15 rue Eugene Millon, Paris

Two and a half hours later

Lang and Nanette shared a tiny room only a few feet from the hospital’s surgery. Fearing the worst despite Lang’s assurances, she had left her son in the custody of a neighbor. As in any such institution, the air was heavy with the odor of antiseptic. An occasional murmur of an intercom system was the only break in the silence.

Lang furtively glanced at his watch.

“It is a long time for such what you call a small wound,” Nanette observed tartly.

“Look, Nanette, I’m sorry. Patrick insisted…”

The conversation stopped with the entry of a woman in hospital scrubs.

Nanette stood on shaky legs, her question unspoken.

Lang could not understand the woman’s French, but her smile and Nanette’s obvious relief told him all he needed to know.

“She says Patrick is fine.” Nanette beamed as the doctor left. “He is a little… what do you say? Woozy. He is a little woozy from the anesthetic from removing the bullet, but he is asking for both of us.”

Following a nurse, Lang and Nanette walked down a short hall, stopping at the last room on the left. Compared to U.S. hospitals, the room was small, barely space for the two beds mandated by France’s national health care. One was empty. Above the other, a monitor beeped in the muted tones of a regular heartbeat. Patrick, his left shoulder swaddled in gleaming white, was sitting up, a broad grin across his face.

Before he could speak a word, Nanette was embracing him gingerly. “Does it hurt?”

Patrick gave what would have been a typical Gallic shrug had he been able to employ both shoulders. “Not so much. They say they will release me tomorrow.”

Nanette’s expression said, not if she had anything to do with it, but Patrick’s attention was on the box in Lang’s hands. “You have opened it?”

Lang shook his head. “I thought I’d reserve that honor for you.”

With his right hand, Patrick pointed to the bandages. “You may have to wait a few days. Why do you not do it for me?”

Lang reached to the side of the bed, unfolding a tray across it, and placed the box on it so that Patrick could see the contents once it was open.

Patrick lifted a corner with his right hand. “It weighs little. How do you plan to open it-with your magic bump key?”

Lang withdrew his key ring. “Afraid not. The hole is too small.” He passed several keys, stopping at a small version of a Swiss Army knife. Opening the blade, he worked it under the lid like a diminutive crow bar. There was a squeal of protesting wood as Lang pried upward. Then a popping sound as the lock mechanism broke. Patrick’s eyes grew large as they met Lang’s when the latter lifted the top from the box.

The smile on Patrick’s face morphed into open lips of astonishment. With his good hand, he turned the box over, dumping its contents onto the collapsible tray.

Lang had to lean forward to see. At first he was unsure of what he saw. Two lumps of what might have been brass, tarnished green, what looked like a neatly folded stack of clothing and a small gold cross on a chain.

Patrick held up the metallic objects. “A French general’s epaulets!”

He shoved them aside to spread the clothing out on the tray. “And a French general’s uniform, size petite!”

Next, Patrick grasped up the cross. “The gift from his mother.”

“Are you saying that uniform, cross and those epaulets were Napoleon’s?” Nanette spoke for the first time since the box had been opened.

“Of course they were,” Patrick smiled. “This would be the uniform and insignia he wore before becoming marshal of France, perhaps at the time he turned cannon on royalists who were besieging the National Convention.”

“Then those are priceless, er, artifacts. They should go to the museum at Les Invalides,” she suggested.

“Not quite yet,” Lang said, drawing the attention of the other two. “Such a donation would surely make the press, and the last thing we-or I-want is to tip the Chinese to the fact that box does not contain Alexander’s relics. I’d much rather let them think what duPaar wants is beyond their reach.”

Patrick puffed his cheeks, expelling his breath in a gust. “But these items are valuable, too valuable for us to keep ourselves.”

“No need,” Lang said. “When the president for life of Haiti sees he won’t be getting what he wants, I’d guess the Chinese will be leaving the country. Once they’re out, you can put the whole story on the front page for all I care.”

“But what stops the Chinese from making another, er, deal, from coming back if they ever find Alexander?” Patrick wanted to know.

“Hopefully, good intelligence and the United States Navy.”

Presidential palace

Petionville, Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Five days later

Tonight Undersecretary Chin Diem was in no mood to enjoy the view of the city below. Failure seemed a small enough price to pay to assure he would never see the madman du-Paar or this pestilence-ridden tropical hell again. But would that be worth the price of failure at home?

He turned from the window as duPaar and his bodyguard entered.

The president for life plopped down behind the desk. “You have something for me?”

“Mr. President…,” Diem began. “I fear I have bad news, a temporary delay.”

DuPaar leaned across the desk, scowling. “Explain.”

“The container we believe holds the remains of Alexander is in the hands of the Americans.”

The following pause was so long, Diem thought the man had not heard. “We tracked them to a church in Paris when-”

“You do not have them and have no certain prospect of obtaining them.” DuPaar spoke so softly the secretary had to lean forward to hear. “I ask for the relics of Alexander. You bring me excuses instead.”

“I’m sure-”

The president for life’s voice escalated from a whisper to a near scream, spittle flying from his mouth. “Do you take me for a fool? Do you think I will accept failure as fulfilling our bargain? Just what do you think?”

“I would think, Mr. President,” Diem began in his most reasonable voice, “that the word of the People’s Republic-”

DuPaar was back to a near whisper again. “Idiot! Do you not understand? Alexander was the world’s greatest warrior. The country who possesses his remains cannot be defeated in battle. It is a fact Ptolemy knew and Perdiccas found out to his dismay when half his army drowned in the Nile.” He sneered. “The People’s Republic does not keep its word!”

He paused as if catching his breath.

“I am sure we, the People’s Republic, will be able-”

DuPaar leaned across the desk. “The People’s Republic will do nothing! Nothing other than getting out of Haiti!”

“But, Mr. President-”

“ Out!” DuPaar was pointing to the door. “Out of this place, out of Haiti. You will leave here immediately. All Chinese troops will be off Haitian soil in ten days or I will go before the UN, appeal to the United States to free us of this invasion…”

Diem had served in the diplomatic corps of his country for over fifteen years, but he had never seen a display like this. “Invasion? But you invited-”

“I invited a peaceful trade mission! Now I learn you have occupied the north coast of my country with military! I will invite the United States to send troops!”

Diem had never dealt with a man quite so crazy before. Admittedly, the North Korean dictator had been nuts, but not as bad as this. With as much dignity as he could muster, he marched toward the door the bodyguard was holding open.

If he was deaf, how had he known to do that?

The White House

Five days later

The president looked up from his desk as Chief of Staff Jack Roberts entered the Oval Office. “You said you had news for me?”

Without waiting to be asked, Roberts slouched into a chair. “Yeah, I do, boss. Two days ago the techies maneuvered one of our Misty-2 satellites into a new orbit.”

The president picked up a pen and was rolling it between his hands. “That’s the one that can see through clouds and is supposed to look like space junk?”

“Yep.”

“OK, so it’s in a new orbit. I assume it can now see the Caribbean. Don’t make me pry the info out of you, Jack.”

Roberts grinned. “No need. The spy in the sky has confirmed the Chinese are leaving Haiti. Their withdrawal should be complete within the week.”

The president leaned back in his chair and grinned right back, showing teeth famous worldwide. “Perfect! That should be shortly after I meet with the president of the People’s Republic. Set up a major news conference immediately afterward. I want all the networks’ big guns there when I announce this administration discovered the secret presence of Chinese military in Haiti and, through diplomacy alone, had them peacefully withdrawn. That should boost our polls before the midterm elections.”

The chief of staff stood. “Not to mention taking off the front page the fact your economic programs haven’t succeeded yet. And you did it without lifting your little finger.”

“No need to tell that part.” The president’s chair snapped upright and he put down the pen with which he had been toying. “I’d rather be lucky than good any day. Oh yeah, there’s one more thing.”

“And that would be?”

“Those people the FBI was protecting, the former Agency people. Did the Bureau ever find them?”

“I don’t think so, no. You want me to call off the dogs?”

The president nodded. “It would seem now we don’t care what they know or might say.”

Roberts cocked his head. “Should we tell them we no longer want to detain them?”

The president frowned, bringing his eyebrows together. “ Detain is an ugly word. I would not want anyone to think this administration is in the business of ‘detaining’ innocent citizens. Simply tell the people over at the Hoover Building we have no further interest in them.”

From the New York Times TOMB OF ALEXANDER FOUND? ALEXANDRIA. One of history’s most enduring mysteries may be on the verge of solution by an Italian-led team of archaeologists. Dr. Antonio Rossi, curator of Rome’s Archaeological Museum, and Dr. Zahi Hawass, general secretary of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, announced yesterday that a heretofore-unknown chamber had recently been discovered off what had been known as the Alabaster Tomb, a location earlier archaeologists had discarded as the site of the final resting place of Alexander the Great. Modern electronic equipment led Dr. Rossi and his crew to reevaluate the site and they discovered part of the tomb had been sealed off, probably by scholars attached to the army of Napoleon Bonaparte. “When he was forced out of Egypt,” Dr. Rossi speculated, “Napoleon intended to return. He did not want his enemies to get the credit for discovering what had been lost for two thousand years, so he tried to cover his tracks.” Rossi explained that using careful archaeological methods of excavation, his team could still be weeks away from determining if this is really the place Alexander was buried. “We will never know for certain if this is Alexander’s tomb,” Rossi said, “unless we actually find the body, in this case, a mummy.” Alexander, known as “the Great,” was king of Macedonia, and died near the ancient city of Babylon in 323 BC.

472 Lafayette Drive, Atlanta

Sunday evening, a month later

Lang Reilly had to step over a snoring Grumps to toss a log on the sputtering fire. “There! That ought to keep it going awhile longer.”

Father Francis, seated on the couch, looked up from the one of the sections of the Sunday edition of the New York Times Lang had given him. “So, Alexander’s mummy might still be in Alexandria after all these years?”

Lang retrieved his glass from the mantlepiece. “Who knows? The only thing certain is that it is not and probably never was in Venice or Paris. Or for that matter, Haiti.”

“You’re basing that on the president’s announcement that Chinese troops are leaving that fortress…”

“La Citadelle.”

“The Citadel. The Chinese are leaving, ergo duPaar didn’t get what he wanted-Alexander’s relics.”

Lang finished off the contents of his glass and crossed the room to the bar. “Elementary, my dear Watson.”

Francis held up his glass. “Watson is thirsty, too.”

Lang tinkled ice into the priest’s glass, followed by a generous measure of scotch.

Lang lifted his glass. “To my health, which I have seriously damaged, drinking to yours!”

Francis was about to reply when Manfred appeared in the doorway, solemn faced, to make an important announcement. “Mommy says dinner is ready.”

Lang stepped back to let Francis through the library/den’s entrance into the dining room. “I hope what we are about to receive is sufficient compensation for your missing the Women’s Guild Potluck Supper at the church tonight.”

“A lot more pot than luck. Bless them all, but I’ve had enough cold fried chicken, potato salad, baked beans and banana pudding to last me the next fifty years.”

“The tribulations of Job.”

Francis took his customary seat at the table. “Not Job but perhaps the culinary equivalent of the hermit’s cave of Saint Jerome.”

Gurt emerged from the kitchen, a ceramic Dutch oven held in gloved hands. “You will have ‘pot’ again. This time pot roast.”

Manfred followed Gurt. With Francis engaged in the newspaper article rather than in the games the priest and small boy normally played, he had “helped” his mother with dinner. Without his assistance, Lang guessed, the meal would have been on the table a half hour earlier.

Lang turned to Francis. “OK, padre, you’re on, but remember, no one wants cold pot roast.”

After a mercifully short blessing, everyone busied themselves with filling their plates. Grumps, ever the optimist, lurked nearby in hopes of spills.

“One thing I don’t understand,” Francis said between bites. “The box. I mean, Napoleon carries a box with epaulets from Egypt, sends it to Haiti and winds up hiding it in a secret compartment in a funeral effigy? Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

Lang speared a potato with his fork. “Maybe not to us. Remember, Napoleon was what today we would call a superstitious man, had an astrologer available at all times to consult as to the most propitious times to invade, go into battle, et cetera. The contents of that box, the stuff he associated with his rise to power, was his talisman, his good-luck charm. Sort of like lending out your lucky rabbit’s foot.”

“Which is less than lucky for the rabbit.”

“Whatever. I’m guessing Napoleon thought the articles from his past, the gold cross, the epaulets from his first general’s uniform, would bring luck to Leclerc.”

“So why did he hide them in a church?” Francis wanted to know.

“I think he knew there would be a wave of reaction to anything having to do with the empire, at least among the victorious allies. Prince Metternich of Austria was leading the Congress of Vienna, composed of the allies, in that direction, dismantling Napoleon’s empire. He hid what he thought was valuable so his son might have it. Unfortunately for him, the plan somehow misfired.”

They were silent for a few more minutes before Francis looked over at Lang, a tray of hot rolls in his hand. “We were so busy discussing Alexander and Napoleon, I forgot to ask. What’s in store for that charlatan, the Reverend Bishop Groom?”

Lang sighed deeply. “I thought forgiveness was part of your shtick, Francis.”

“I forgive all charlatans but I’m hoping the law won’t.”

Lang accepted the bread tray. “He’s pondering an offer to plead to two counts of tax evasion and one of mail fraud. I did a hell of a job getting the U.S. attorney to make the offer. The feds usually won’t bargain. He should be a free man in five or six years.”

“Enough time to repent.”

Gurt changed the subject. “Do you think your friend Rossi will find Alexander’s mummy?”

Lang shrugged. “For his sake, I hope so.”

“For your sakes, I hope not.”

Both Lang and Gurt stopped with forks halfway to mouths and stared at Francis.

“Why not?” she wanted to know.

“You’re joking! Surely there’s not a religious reason not to discover the greatest pagan of them all?” Lang added.

Francis put his silverware down and looked from one to the other. “Of all the people in the world who should know better, you two should. Alexander the Great’s mummy-if it exists-has brought nothing but trouble to those who searched for it. Alexander’s general, Perdiccas, lost an army trying to get it. Napoleon lost Egypt. You two could have lost your lives.”

Lang forgot his dinner for the moment. “Are you saying there’s a curse on it, like King Tut’s curse? Talk about pagan!”

Francis calmly returned his attention to his plate. “Pooh-pooh all you want. Within less than a month of opening Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1923, Lord Carnarvon, the expedition’s financial backer, was dead.”

Lang wiped his mouth and put down his napkin, fascinated Francis could believe in such hogwash. “The curse of the mummy? The twenty-six other people present, including Howard Carter, the man who found Tut’s tomb, survived. Surely you don’t believe in curses?”

Francis was unperturbed. “Of course not. I do believe some things are inherently evil, including grave robbing, even of pagan graves.”

Lang started to respond but caught a slight negative head shake from Gurt- No, don’t go there. Francis was by far the brightest person Lang had ever know. But sometimes there were issues that simply could not be discussed within the framework of their friendship. Faith could be neither explained nor rationalized. Intrinsic evil was not an arguable subject.

Gurt broke what could have become a heavy silence. “If Alexander’s mummy is found, then what?”

“The Egyptian, Hawass, will claim it for his country,” Lang said.

Francis smiled, reaching for another helping of pot roast. “Let us hope it stays there.”

Although Lang didn’t agree with his friend’s idea of evil per se, he hoped so, too.