The Coptic Secret

I.

Excerpt from the London Times:

Kidnapping Victim Stoned

LONDON-Scotland Yard announced today a grisly discovery next to St. Paul's Cathedral: the body of Sir Eon Weatherston-Wilby, who had been kidnapped the previous evening from the British Museum during a robbery at an affair sponsored by Weatherston-Wilby celebrating his donation of several ancient manuscripts from Egypt.

Police sources who declined to be identified stated the badly bruised body had apparently been thrown from an upper-story window and then subjected to trauma from blunt objects, quite possibly stones found nearby. Police are investigating the significance of a scallop shell placed on the victim's body, possibly by the killers.

An autopsy is under way. Whether the victim survived the fall and was alive at the time of the possible stoning has yet to be determined as has any motive for the kidnapping and murder.

Inspector Dylan Fitzwilliam said, "I doubt the motive was entirely robbery. Since the manuscripts are related to a murder, they would be difficult to sell on the open market"

The inspector did not exclude the possibility the theft was a "contract" job, that is, that the robbers were commissioned by a collector who wished the manuscripts for himself.

The British Museum declined to place a value on the stolen objects.

The abduction of Weatherston-Wilby took place…

II.

Delta Flight 1701

Gatwick-Atlanta

Lang Reilly reread the article for the third time. He had only seen it because the airline's supply of USA Today had not been delivered prior to the first leg of the Atlanta- London-Atlanta trip the 777 would make that day. For that matter, Lang usually took the foundation's Gulfstream IV to the UK purely as a protest against the Labour government's latest manifestation of wealth envy, a $250 tax on first-class seats.

Right up there in the league with abolishing foxhunting.

The remonstration had been impossible this trip. The Gulfstream's annual inspection was in process and the aircraft grounded for at least a week.

A flight attendant, regulation smile painted across her face, dangled a steaming hot towel in front of him. Without thought, he murmured his thanks and took it.

Lang spread the hot towel across his face as though preparing for an old-fashioned barbershop shave before dropping it on the wide seat divider.

He was lost in thought when the other attendant with an identical smile retrieved it.

Why kill Eon?

If the texts were the point of the robbery, murder made no sense. If for some reason they wanted Eon dead, why take the books? If Eon were complicit in the theft, the thieves might want to eliminate him, but why would he arrange to steal something he was donating? Unless the robbers feared identification, killing Eon was pointless. Lang examined his memory like a student reviewing a text for a final exam. Had Eon given any evidence of recognition? If so, Lang had missed it.

No, none of the possible solutions so far was the correct one.

The only clue was throwing a man from St. Paul's and then stoning him to death if he wasn't already dead. The only purpose for that exercise had to be to send a message.

But what?

And to whom?

Lang slid down the window shade and reclined his seat to the full extent. Perhaps he could get a little sleep before the airline committed the gastronomic atrocity known euphemistically as "an in-flight meal." The only purpose served by airline food, Lang mused, was to ensure the British did not have the world's worst.

He closed his eyes but the vision of Eon being led away would not fade. He hadn't exactly put up a fight but he hadn't gone willingly, either. Lang tried to banish the thought but it was as stubborn as one of Atlanta's panhandlers.

Admitting defeat, he sat up and thumbed through a paperback he had bought at the airport, well aware of his inability to sleep on airplanes. He knew the compulsion to be alert at all times was irrational. If something went seriously south at 37,000 feet, there wasn't a lot he could do about it, awake or asleep.

He began the book, hoping it would banish Eon for the moment.

III.

Park Place

2660 Peachtree Road

Atlanta, Georgia

That Evening

His single suitcase at his feet, Lang was fumbling in his pocket for the key to his condominium. Once inside, he'd take a shower and head for the kennel where Grumps, arguably the world's ugliest dog, would be impatiently waiting.

Why the mutt was so eager to leave what appeared to be, by canine standards, luxurious digs, Lang never knew. Plus the fact the dog always put on a pound or two. Lang's hand closed around his key ring. He slipped the brass key into the lock, turned and eased the door open.

Simultaneously, he smelled the strong odor of gas and there was an audible click, a sound like someone snapping a cigarette lighter.

He may have imagined seeing a spark but there was one, visible or not.

Instinctively, he lunged backward, pulling the door shut but not soon enough.

An explosion was accompanied by heat, a burning, searing monster that tried to devour him as it flung him across the hall and against the far wall as easily as a child might toss away a rag doll.

He never heard the snap of bones the impact caused.

IV.

Henry Grady Memorial Hospital

Trauma & Burn Unit

Butler Street

Atlanta, Georgia

Three Weeks Later

Lang was dead.

He was sure.

Otherwise, why would he be visited by the persons he knew were deceased?

On the other hand, being dead meant an end to pain, right? His pain was far from at an end. Sometimes he ached and burned over every inch of his body; at others he could localize his suffering to a leg, an arm, his back. The pain was always red, blurring his dim sight like a curtain of misery that separated him from whatever world he was in, either real or ephemeral.

The only real thing was the pain.

It was like a slowly rising and receding tide. At times he could get his head above it, see the universal Light that blinded and feel the agony wash over him. It was all featureless, soundless red. Then, he would be pulled back under into a wet, warm stygian black he had begun to think of as "the Womb," a place where there was no discomfort, only a mellowness and a sensation of floating in space.

That was where the dead were.

As though in a fever dream, he saw his cubicle at the agency's Frankfurt station: a dim, grimy building across from the Bahnhof, where he had spent the bulk of his career. He had graduated from college with a liberal arts degree that, outside of academe, proved worthless. When he was looking around for a job, the agency had a certain appeal: lurking in the shadows of Eastern European cities while countering the machinations of beautiful spies…

The experience had proved to be more Dilbert than Bond.

After months of training, Lang had been assigned not to Operations but to Intelligence. Instead of glamour and excitement, his daily chores included monitoring a number of Eastern European newspapers and telecasts.

With a single exception, he had never ventured from friendly soil.

Then he had met Dawn, the woman who became his love, his soul mate and his wife. The collapse of the Evil Empire had meant cutbacks in the agency's budget and resulting reductions in force. It had been to please Dawn, though, he had quit the agency and gone to law school. A small matter. He would have invaded hell had she asked.

Once his law practice began to blossom, Dawn declined. A loss of appetite and weight resulted in a visit to the doctor and a death sentence. Lang had watched the daily dying of a woman in her early thirties as she metastasized into a wrinkled crone, a sack of bones with claws for hands. He had visited her hours a day, making promises and plans they both knew would never be kept.

She died with him at her bedside, her cold face shimmering through the tears he made no effort to staunch.

He fell into a hole every bit as black as the one into which he now sank.

But Dawn was here. Not the pitiful skeleton his wife had become but the full-bodied beautiful girl he had married. She whispered in his ear, sorrowful at his pain and reluctant to leave him.

He would have liked to have joined her.

Then there was Janet, his sister, and Jeff, her adopted son, both dead, murdered in Paris. Across the void, he heard her laugh, scoffing at life's inconsistencies. Jeff still had his baseball cap on backward, was still clad in drooping shorts that almost reached his ankles. Forever Lang's ten-year-old best pal and frequent coconspirator against the established order.

They both seemed glad to see him.

Do the dead enjoy?

Then there were the people who were alive. At least, he thought they were.

They came only when Lang had his head above the dark tide, when he was in so much pain he could see them only through eyes he could barely open, hear not at all though they seemed to be speaking.

He was fairly certain some of them weren't even there.

Francis, the black priest, Janet's former confessor and Lang's best friend, was there more likely than not, his prayers doing Lang about as much good as they had Janet and Jeff. But Lang appreciated him coming even if visitation of the sick was part of the priest shtick anyway.

Sara, his secretary, came less frequently, for which Lang was grateful. The first two times, she dissolved into tears and had to be led away by a woman in white. The next couple of times she tried to speak but Lang could hear nothing. He was vaguely aware he had an office and a law practice that needed some sort of attention and that was probably where Sara went, but it all seemed very far away, remote from the black tides that engulfed him.

And he was probably dead anyway.

Then there was Gurt, the one he was fairly certain wasn't really there. A couple of years after Dawn died, Lang had been in Rome and taken up where he had left off with Gurt Fuchs, a German national and coworker at the agency.

Tall, blonde and looking like a travel poster for her native country, she moved through a crowd making men stare and women jealous. She had taken temporary leave from the agency to come to Atlanta and she and Lang had lived together for a year or so. Lang had dreamed of marriage and the family he had not had with Dawn. Gurt was not interested. She inexplicably announced she was going back to work in Europe. He had not seen her since.

Not till now anyway.

If she was really there.

Which he doubted.

Either way, they had exchanged more wisecracks than statements of affection. If he could, he would tell her how much he had loved her, although romantic conversation was hardly his forte or hers.

Now it might be too late.

Either Gurt in the flesh or as a chimera would enter the lenslike edge of his vision and stand at the foot of his bed, speaking words that to him were only silence. She hadn't aged since he last saw her, a time span he simply was unable to calculate, so it was unlikely she was real. Reinforcing the idea even more was the child that grasped her hand, a blond little boy with eyes the color of cornflowers.

There was something vaguely familiar about him, although Lang's pain-racked brain simply refused to figure out what. He peered at Lang with the curiosity a child might display toward an insect specimen skewered on pins in an exhibit box.

Then the White Angel would appear and Gurt and the child would leave.

The White Angel, the woman whose face changed frequently but who always presaged Lang's return to the Womb.

Lang had no idea how long he had been slipping from one world to the next. He only knew he woke up one morning, really woke up. He could hear voices and footsteps outside his room, fuzzy but sound nonetheless. He could see without the blurred edges at the perimeters of his vision. He recognized smells of a hospital, antiseptic, starch and, he thought, pain.

Father Francis Narumba sat next to the bed in full priestly regalia, reading what Lang could see was the sports section of the Atlanta paper.

"How're the Braves doing?" Lang asked, the first words he could remember since… well, since he wound up here.

Wherever "here" was.

Francis looked up, as startled as if one of the icons on his altar had spoken.

Perhaps more so.

"God be praised! I thought…" He smiled. "Debitum naturae."

Debt to nature, Latin euphemism for death.

Francis was also what Lang described as a victim of a liberal arts education. Lang and the priest made a game of Latin aphorisms.

"Debemur mori nos nostraque," Lang replied, surprised how easily he did so.

Francis put down the paper and came to stand over the bed. "Horace was right: we and our works may be destined for death, but it looks like you aren't quite due yet."

Lang struggled to sit up only to find he was too weak. That was when he discovered the tubes stuck into the back of his hand.

Francis gently pushed him against the pillows. "Take it easy! Te hominem esse memento!"

The line a slave always whispered into a conquering general's ear as he rode a chariot through Rome's streets in a triumph; remember, you are but mortal.

"I may only be human, but I've been here… how long?"

"Nearly a month."

"I need to get out and-"

"And what? At the moment you aren't strong enough to get out of bed."

"What happened? I had just come back from England…"

"Likely you left the gas on your stove on. When you opened the door, something sparked."

Lang had no trouble remembering his last night before departing for London. He had dropped Grumps off at the kennel and met Alicia Warner, an assistant US attorney and fairly regular date for almost a year, for dinner at a Thai restaurant. The relationship was definitely on the wane. He had the feeling both of them were simply going through the motions before ending it.

The fact she had been kidnapped a year ago in an effort to lure Lang to his death hadn't exactly helped matters.

Lang banished her from his thoughts.

"Grumps?" he asked.

Francis shook his head slowly, not managing to suppress the ghost of a smile. "In an act of Christian charity, I took him in. He repays me by howling at choir practice, snapping at the chairperson of the women's auxiliary and raiding the garbage at the feed-the-poor soup kitchen."

"Centuries of persecution have made us heretics a surly lot. Vivit post funera virtus."

"My deeds may survive the grave but I question if they will survive the bishop."

Lang's ribs ached when he chuckled but it felt good anyway. The fact Francis would give shelter to a mad dog rather than see it put down wouldn't stop him from complaining about being bitten.

He became serious again.

The stove. He hadn't used it the night before he left and he surely would have smelled gas when he came home that night if it had been on.

Then…?

"You were lucky," Francis observed. "For reasons I can't imagine, the angels were watching over you. Somehow you managed to get the apartment door between you and most of the blast. That kept you from burns that would have been fatal. You wound up with surprisingly few burns, but significant internal injuries and broken bones. Happily your skull was too thick to fracture, saving possible brain damage."

Lang smiled weakly. "I'm not sure if I'm being diagnosed or insulted."

The priest glanced at his watch. "I've got a midday prayer service to do but I'll be back this evening."

"That a threat or promise?"

This time Francis chuckled. "Careful or I'll have the folks at Manuel's cater you a meal."

Manuel's Tavern. Quite possibly the funkiest bar in town, the pair's favorite watering hole despite spectacularly bad food. It was a place the Zagat's people would hire Michael Shumacher to drive them past.

"I'll bet the chow here makes Manuel's taste good."

Francis opened the door. "A true miracle."

"Oh, Francis?"

The doorknob in his hand, the priest turned, a question on his face.

"Gurt. I dreamed of Dawn and Janet and Jeff, a number of people who… who aren't here anymore. But Gurt… she seemed real enough. Did she…?"

Francis face became immobile, the expression of someone unwilling to speak. "She's real enough." "But…?"

"I'll see you later."

Francis was gone.

More of a retreat than an exit.

V.

Two Days Later

The White Angel propped Lang up enough to eat the equally unappetizing and unrecognizable meal from his bed tray. Its mere appearance made Lang nostalgic for the feeding tube that had been removed just that morning. With totally unjustifiable enthusiasm, she set it before him: there was some sort of mystery meat, into the origins of which Lang feared to inquire, green goo that might at one time have been string beans and a sickly sweet red mass he guessed was Jell-O.

He had discovered a cuisine to rank below airline food.

But it was food, the first he could actually eat rather than absorb through a plastic line.

"Doctor will be so pleased when he makes his rounds," she cooed. "You've really made a remarkable recovery."

"Doctor" was spoken in the same tone as she might have referred to the Deity.

Lang shoved the tray away, surprised at how much of the stuff he had eaten. "That mean I'm going home?"

She looked almost hurt at the suggestion. "Home?"

"You know, the place we sleep at night, keep our stuff. Usually a house or apartment."

She took the tray. "I'd guess you'll be moved out of the trauma and burn ward, probably to a private hospital."

Grady was publicly funded. Unlike most institutions in which the Atlanta/Fulton County government had a hand, it somehow managed to accomplish its function despite continual budget overruns, accusations of racism from both sides, scandals, mismanagement that would make Larry, Curly and Moe look like geniuses and a bureaucracy that could stifle a hurricane.

It did, however, have the area's premier trauma and burn centers and provided practical experience to the residents of both Emory and Morehouse medical schools.

No matter what its qualities, Lang didn't intend to remain a guest any longer than he had to. And he certainly didn't plan a lengthy convalescence at a private hospital. "But I need to…"

The White Angel exited, tray in hand, leaving him to stare at the open door.

It seemed almost preplanned. Seconds after her exit a slender black man in a suit walked in. "Unnerstan' you doin' much better, Mr. Reilly."

Franklin Morse, Detective Franklin Morse, Atlanta Police Department. He and Lang had a history.

"Who snitched, the nurse?"

Morse made himself at home in the chair Francis had occupied. "Now, that ain' a friendly way to start a conversation, Mr. Reilly."

"I don't recall any of our conversations being particularly friendly, Detective."

Morse sprung out of the chair and began inspecting a list of regulations posted on the back of the door. The man rarely sat still, Lang remembered. His age was at best a guess but he had the build of one of those African marathon runners. Lang would have bet he had run more than one felon down on foot.

Morse spun around to face the bed. "You prolly don' recall any time we had a conversation when there wasn't some sorta mayhem goin' on. Folks jumpin' outta your condo, gettin' murdered, blowin' up your car, stuff like that. Take a whole precinct to keep up with you, Mr. Reilly. Now yo' condo's exploded."

Lang knew the man was perfectly capable of speaking English instead of the dialect he usually chose. "Gas. They say I left the gas on."

The detective flopped back into the chair. "Thass what they say. Question I got, you leave the gas on, why wire a fire starter to the latch?"

Lang stared wide-eyed. "Fire starter?"

"Y'know, one of them gadgets you get what you pull the trigger an' it lights up to start yo' charcoal or fire. Get 'em in any hardware store."

Lang didn't have to think long about the implications of that.

"You found the fire starter?"

"Arson 'vestigator did. What was left of it. Sum'bitch fixed up so's you turns a key and disengage the lock, it clicks. Time you push the door open… Boom! A blast furnace. 'Fraid everythin you had in there is so much ash."

"So you think someone's trying to kill me."

"Don' think it's an April Fool's prank. Lucky it didn't take out none o' your neighbors."

"No one was hurt?"

" 'Cept you. Made dust outta the crystal collection the lady 'bove you had, though. Like usual, I don' s'pose you got even a guess who the perp might be."

Lang shook his head. "You're right."

Morse was on his feet again. "This ain' no game, Mr. Reilly. Whoever done that, he gonna try again. Nex' time you might not be the only person hurt."

Lang gestured around the room. "If they were going to try again, this would be the perfect time and place. I've been pretty helpless."

The detective had his back to the room, staring out of the window. From somewhere below, an ambulance's siren wailed. He could hear the mechanical grinding of a garbage truck's insatiable appetite. "Thass why I had a coupla men stationed on this floor."

"I appreciate that, Detective."

Morse turned to face him. "Wasn't you I was worried 'bout, Mr. Reilly. I jes' wanted to make sure nobody here got kilt."

Lang sank back into the embrace of the pillows. "How thoughtful."

Morse shook his head. "Sumpthin' 'bout you. Mr. Reilly, you piss off the wrong people. I jus' wanna find out who 'fore the next body arrives."

"I'm truly touched."

Morse shot a glance Lang couldn't read. "Jus' 'member, Mr. Reilly, this ain' Dodge City. I catch you even spittin' on the street, you are so busted." "I'll bear that in mind"

"Be sure you do, Mr. Reilly"

Morse didn't look back as he left.

With extra effort, Lang reached the TV remote on the table beside his bed. Reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond and Seinfeld. Silliness met with canned laughter. A game show and a cooking lesson. The two twenty-four-hour news channels were recounting the latest episode in the life of a movie star Lang had never heard of.

He turned it off.

He'd been right: he hadn't left the gas on. Someone had tried to kill him. Whoever had kidnapped and killed Eon would be a likely culprit. They had moved quickly, putting a plan into play within twenty-four hours and across an ocean. Whoever they were, they had international ties. The thought didn't make him feel any better.

He reached for the phone to call Sara and ask her to go to his place and bring him the SIG Sauer. He took his hand back. If what Morse said was correct, the weapon was likely so much twisted metal.

He needed a replacement and he needed it fast.

Without it, his life depended on the protection of the Atlanta Police Department, the Keystone Kops who had mistakenly shot and killed a ninety-two-year-old woman when the SWAT team had raided the wrong house in a drug bust, who had arrested and roughed up a visiting college professor for jaywalking and who, more than once, had put 911 callers on hold.

No thanks.

Weak or not, he had to get out of here.

Problem was, he was wired in. Two tubes in the back of one hand and a catheter. The two in his hand were easily removed but the other…?

He was reaching for the buzzer to summon the nurse when his hand froze in midair.

He must be hallucinating again.

Gurt stood in the doorway.

Just under six feet, long blonde hair reached below her shoulders. With large, firm breasts, wasplike waist and shapely legs, she had a figure most twenty-somethings would envy.

The same small boy from Lang's supposed dreams stood at her side, his blue eyes locked onto Lang's.

"It was said you might die," Gurt announced, immobile in the doorway.

"Sorry to disappoint you."

Gurt was impervious to sarcasm. It was part of her Germanic nature. "Why sorry? It does me glad."

"I'm glad you've come back."

"I came because I wanted Manfred to at least see his father."

She gently pushed the boy forward.

"His father?"

"Lang, close your mouth. It is most unattractive hanging open."

Now Lang realized why the child had something familiar about him. His face was a small, youthful reproduction of his own. _

Lang couldn't take his eyes off the boy who was standing next to the bed, regarding him as though trying to memorize what he saw. "But I don't… I couldn't… You never…"

Gurt seated herself in the chair, fished in a purse the size of a small suitcase and produced a pack of Marlboros. "I left because I was pregnant. I did not want what you call a marriage of a shotgun."

Gurt s mastery of the American idiom was less than complete.

"Shotgun wedding," Lang corrected.

"Why would someone marry a shotgun?"

Lang shook his head impatiently. "You knew I wanted to marry you. That's why it hurt so bad when you left me. I

mean, I just turned around one day and you were gone…"

His voice trailed off as he remembered his shock and sorrow. Hell, he ought to be angry with this woman who had thought so little of his feelings. He ought to…

Whatever.

He was so glad to see her, even more astonished and delighted his dreams of a family might materialize long after he had abandoned them, that his joy would permit no anger. He shook his head slowly, making sure this scene wasn't the result of painkillers.

A son!

He had despaired of ever seeing Gurt again, of having a child of his own. Pain or not, he would have chosen a dozen more broken bones as the price of the elation he felt. Despite his desire for a family, he had always viewed the alleged joy of parenthood as suspect. Midnight feedings, projectile vomiting, nasty diapers. In seconds he had become a believer, a transformation more miraculous than any politician's hundred and eighty degree change of position.

And look at him! Already handsome, intelligence glittering from those blue eyes. In an instant he forgave Gurt the pain of her disappearance, her refusal to consider marriage and anything else she might ever have done or do in the future. He knew it was irrational but he didn't care. He knew it was love for the family that had appeared as though from behind a magician's cape. It was not a time to be rational

Involuntarily, he reached for the boy, to touch him, to make sure this was no drug-induced dream. The tubes stopped his arms short. The boy, Manfred, stepped into the embrace without hesitation. Lang felt even more delight at the touch of his son's skin, the rigidity of his bones, the knowledge this flesh was of his own.

Ignoring the sign above her head that proclaimed Grady was a smoke-free environment, Gurt lit up, sending a jet of blue smoke into the air. Lang was too happy to chide her about her habit in general and the locale in which she was giving in to it in particular.

She leaned back in the chair. "When I left you, I did not want you to know I had pregnant. I wanted to go back to work-"

"You didn't have to," Lang interrupted.

She nodded and took another drag from her cigarette. "I know. But who wants to be like the women in the building where you live? Not working makes them stupid." She took another puff. "Or they already are. Even though I knew I had a baby coming, I did not want to ask you for help, to look like I needed anyone nor was I willing to give up what could be the only part of you I would ever have."

"By your choice." There was no brittle edge to his tone, only a happy recitation of fact.

"Had you not nearly died, I would probably never seen you again," she said with uncharacteristic emotion. "I would have been very foolish. If you wish me to go, I will."

Instead, he spread his arms again, releasing his son. Cigarette in hand, Gurt came to the bed and embraced him. Lang smelled a mixture of stale tobacco and soap with the smallest hint of some sort of flower fragrance, the one he associated with her. The memories flooded back: Rome, London, Seville, the Languedoc of France. All the dangers they had faced. And the wild, uninhibited, noisy sex. He had missed the former almost as much as the latter.

"Go? Try it and I'll chain you to the bed," he said with a smile.

As though with a will of their own, his hands started moving across her back, down her sides to her hips.

She gently pushed back. "Later. When Manfred is not here."

The first lust he had felt in longer than he cared to remember had not made Lang forget the boy. "No harm in him seeing his parents' affection."

Gurt cocked an eyebrow. "Affection'? Another minute and you would have had me across the bed."

The growing discomfort from the catheter made Lang painfully aware of how right she was.

He leaned back into the pillows. "Exactly what do you have in mind? I mean, I better be planning on you staying this time."

He was afraid to bring up any arrangement that smacked of permanence. She had left his life twice before when he had.

"Manfred and I will be here at least until the hospital releases you. Longer if you wish."

Lang's eyes were riveted on his son, the child he was beginning to regard as miraculous as any held by one of Rubens's Madonnas. "I can't wait that long. Whoever blew up my condo is going to try again. I'm a sitting duck here."

"What do nesting birds have to do with it?" She was looking for a place to stub out her cigarette. She finally settled on a glass beside the bed before she returned to the chair. "There are men outside that look like policemen."

"They are, City of Atlanta. You lived here a year or so. Would you trust your life to the Atlanta police?"

She gave a toss of the head. "You do not have to. That is one of the reasons I came."

It was not bravado. She had saved his life more than once. After winning the agency's women's shooting competition, she had demanded a face-off with the male champion. She had humiliated him.

"You have a weapon?"

"I had no plans to protect you with a nail file."

"Manfred?"

"He will stay with Francis for the time being."

Francis, keeper of Lang's dog and now Lang's son. The priest was making his bid for sainthood.

Or institutional confinement.

Francis.

Lang recalled his friend's reaction when he had told him he thought he had dreamed of Gurt. "Francis, he…"

"He called me hours after you were admitted to the hospital. The doctors were not, er, optimistic."

Lang realized Francis had kept in touch with Gurt, maybe even knew about Manfred. He should feel annoyed, piqued that his friend had kept this information to himself.

But he was far too happy.

And too tired. His first few days back in the world had fatigued him far beyond anything he would have anticipated. He fought the gravitational pull of his eyelids as long as he could.

Then he slipped into sleep.

VI.

Park Place

2660 Peachtree Road Atlanta, Georgia A Month Later

Today was the first time Lang had seen his previous home since the blast. He had decided to rebuild section by section, starting with the tiny kitchen. A new wall oven was to be delivered from Home Depot today. So far it had not arrived.

The condominium association had replaced the exterior glass through which was a magnificent view of the city's premier avenue, a long stretch of pavement lined with blossoming trees that pointed like an arrow to the high- rise office buildings of downtown. That was the only thing unchanged. Today was also the first time Lang had had Manfred to himself. There had been moments when Gurt had been running errands or absent for some other reason but never far away. Lang's anticipation of the event had been more disturbing than the prospect of seeing his condo for the first time since the explosion. Lang was a newcomer in his son's life. What if the kid suddenly decided he wanted his mother? What if he suddenly got sick, developed one of those childhood diseases that seemed to come and go with the irregular suddenness of summer thunderstorms? There wasn't any Parenting for Dummies on the bookstore shelves.

Lang had fabricated a dozen excuses, some very good, why taking Manfred along was not a good idea. He was relieved when Gurt had dismissed them all with an arched eyebrow, an observation that children were not breakable and a reminder Lang had a lot of catching up to do.

The uncertainties evaporated as soon as Manfred put his small hand in Lang's, looked up with blue eyes expressing only pleasurable expectations and asked, "Where are we going today? Can Grumps come?"

How hard could fatherhood be?

Hadn't he been the closest thing to a father his nephew Jeff had? And Jeff had been only a year or so older than Manfred when Janet had adopted him. They had become instant buddies. Manfred would be fine. So would Lang.

Smelling of burned wood and mold, the condo resembled nothing more than some primeval cave. The walls were blackened as though from years of cooking fires. Glass crunched underfoot as he poked at this and that with one of his crutches while holding both the other and Manfred's hand.

The boy made an exaggerated show of holding his nose. "It stinks, Vati."

"Daddy," Lang corrected gently. "In America, I'm your daddy."

He had only about three years to make sure the boy spoke perfect English before he started school.

And it would be the city's best private school His son was bright and Lang had influence. He would also attend the best of colleges, maybe Harvard. No, someplace more interested in education than politics. Maybe something somewhere in the South. Vanderbilt or Duke, perhaps. Then law school and a partnership with Lang. Or maybe a year or two with one of the mammoth law factories where he'd learn a little humility as well as how to crank out twenty-five billable hours a day. Then…

If Gurt would stay that long.

Bobby Burns's comments on the plans of mice and men came to mind.

The boy's face had clouded with the gentle reprimand.

"You're right, though, it doesn't smell so good." Lang agreed with a grin.

Lang was regarding what had been a secretary, a rare remainder from the Charleston workshop of Thomas Elfe, one of pre-Revolutionary America's finest cabinetmakers. It was one of the two or three items he had not sold after Dawn's death. It had housed his collection of antique books and a small group of antiquities. He and Dawn had found it in one of the shops along Queen Street, paid far too much for it and given it a prominent place in the small house he had also sold. Now it was all just so much ash.

He sighed.

Stuff, Francis had said, just stuff, objects that, after all, we only rent during the course of our lives.

Lang had at least pretended to be comforted.

But he wasn't.

Even though he would have gleefully swapped a dozen condominiums at Park Place to learn he had a son, an heir, whoever had done this was going to regret they hadn't killed him.

"Vat… Daddy, why did the bad people burn your house?"

A good question. Lang steered his small companion toward what had been the bedroom. "I don't know. Maybe because they were just that, bad people."

Manfred took in the destruction in the bedroom. "Shit!"

Lang's eyes widened. One of the things he had learned quickly: small children cannot remember to say "thank you" or "please" but they never forget four-letter words.

He couldn't bring himself to rebuke the boy. Instead, he would have smiled had he not been looking at the twisted wire that had been his bedsprings. Squatting sent an electriclike shock of pain from ankle to hip but he wanted to sift through the ash and debris. Sure enough, the SIG Sauer was there, its plastic grip melted into some form of modern art. The heat had set off the bullets in the clip, destroying the firing chamber.

He dropped it, his eye caught by another shine of metal. The small snapshot of Dawn in its silver frame. Miraculously, the glass hadn't even cracked. He blew the dust away and slipped it into his pocket.

"Who's that?" Manfred asked.

Lang sighed again. "Someone I knew a long, long time ago."

"Before you knew Mommy?"

Lang started to simply lie and stopped. He was not about to begin his relationship with his son with untruths. "No, I knew Mommy before I knew her. But there was a time…"

How do you explain the complexity of man/woman relationships to a three-year-old?

You don't.

"Let's just say I knew her before I loved Mommy."

That seemed to satisfy him.

He put an arm around Lang's shoulders and squeezed. "I love you, Daddy."

"And I you," Lang said, gritting his teeth against the pain of standing up. "There isn't anything else here worth saving."

A knock at the door.

Lang gave Manfred a gentle shove. "Go open it, will you? It should be men with the oven. Daddy isn't moving so swiftly these days."

Painfully, Lang made his way from the bedroom. From its door he could see two burly men with a wheeled pallet. Whatever was under the shipping blanket was a lot larger than a wall oven.

Lang stopped just inside his front door, watching the blankets come off. Underneath was a huge stove. Six gas burners, grill, two ovens. The thing was larger than his entire kitchen.

"Where you want it?" one of the men asked.

"The enlisted men's mess at Fort Benning, maybe?" Lang responded. "That isn't what I ordered."

The other man looked at a slip of paper before showing it to Lang. "This is what the order form shows."

Lang groaned inwardly.

Home Depot had been founded right here in Atlanta and had grown into the largest home supply company in the world. Its two founders had retired, one bestowing on the city the world's biggest aquarium. The other had purchased the suppurating sore of sports, the Atlanta football team. Only fantasy and hubris could have made him think he could lift the team to a level of mediocrity for which it had vainly struggled for forty years.

Rumor had it that since the founders' departure, the company's service had sunk to the same performance level as the football team.

"I don't care what the paper shows," Lang said. "You can see this stove won't fit into that kitchen."

The man shrugged. "You can take that up with the appliance department. All we do is deliver."

"Well, you can't leave it here."

"Yeah, we can. Fact, we can't take it back without orders from them, the appliance department."

Lang eased the door shut, leaving just a crack. "You're not bringing that thing in here."

With the disinterest Lang thought exclusive to the US Postal Service, the men simply collected the blankets, took the pallet and left the huge stove in the hallway.

Lang almost swore until he remembered the small boy at his side. Instead, he took out his BlackBerry and punched in a number.

"Sara? I need you to call Home Depot, see if you can get someone on the phone with at least a room-temperature IQ…?

Outside, a taxi was waiting to take him to meet Gurt and the SUV he had rented until he regained his agility. He hated the lumbering gas guzzler but a more nimble vehicle provided little room to maneuver with in a cast or to store crutches. Lang was unable to drive his manual shift Porsche still garaged here at Park Place. His frustration at having to rely on others tended to make him ill-tempered except where Manfred was concerned. He was impatient for the time he would be mobile enough to play with his son, to take him to a Braves game or any of the things young fathers did.

In the meantime, he kept alert. Whoever had tried to kill him wasn't likely to give up. The only reason he could imagine why they had waited this long was that they either hoped he would become less than cautious or hadn't been able to find him.

He had left the hospital to convalesce in a Trappist monastery in nearby Conyers, a small town east of Atlanta. The quarters had been Spartan, the food hardy if less than sensational. Given the vows of silence of the brothers, the conversation had been less than spectacular, too. He had lived for Gurt and Manfred's daily visits. Still, he appreciated whatever ecumenical strings Francis had pulled to get him into one of the last places on earth any who knew him might look.

Any organization efficient enough to track him down from London to Atlanta, though, would have eyes and ears. Now that he was on the street, they would know it.

The thought was less than comforting.

Once out of the monastery, he, Gurt and Manfred were living on the land Lang called simply "the Farm" The relatively small acreage would have made "plantation" seem not only potentially politically incorrect but pretentious as well. About an hour's drive from the city's southern limit, Lang had bought it some years ago in the name of a dummy corporation. The purchase included a frame cabin of about fifteen hundred square feet, no phone or cable TV. Even better, cell phone reception was spotty when it existed at all. A perfect retreat. It did have good redneck neighbors who took each others' property and privacy rights seriously. They adorned their pickups' rear windows with racks holding at least one shotgun or rifle.

Burglars or home invaders were wise to confine themselves to venues other than Lamar County.

Even better was the ten-acre pond. Manfred had, possibly, never seen a live fish. He squealed with excitement each time he, with minor assistance from Lang, dragged a shiny, flopping bass or bream onto the clay banks. The child had somewhat less enthusiasm for cleaning his catch, something his father insisted upon. Gurt was probably even more thankful than her son when throwing the fish back became the custom. All three had eaten about as much marine life as they wanted for the time being.

Instead of his normal twenty-three-and-a-half-hour daily nap, Grumps showed signs of life, even giving token chase to rabbits he had to know would outdistance him in seconds. He followed Manfred everywhere, a pastime Lang tried to not let annoy him. After all, it had been Lang who had provided the mutt's keep all these years.

But then, what living creature could not adore Lang's son?

All in all, it had been a restful, pastoral period to mend, reacquaint himself with Gurt and get to know his son while bones healed and internal organs returned to their natural locations.

It ended that night.

Not for the first time, Lang was pleasantly surprised by Gurt's adaptability. She had produced a dinner indigenous to the locale: roasted hen with baked sweet potato and collards. As a native Southerner, Lang had been equally delighted and astonished. The green leaves were usually harvested only after the first frost and the unpleasant odor of cooking them normally permeated an entire house. Before he was through marveling at their appearance on the table, she put a small black iron skillet of cornbread in front of him.

Made with buttermilk. It might not have been as good as Lang's mother used to make, but it sure was better than mix out of a box.

He started to ask where she had suddenly acquired such peculiarly Southern cooking skills, thought better of it, and reached for another slice of cornbread.

From his high chair, Manfred inspected the greens suspiciously. "Is it grass?"

Lang was sprinkling the customary green pepper sauce over his own. "It's good. Try it."

With a skeptical eye on his father, the child speared a single leaf and slid it into his mouth, followed by another.

"What is that?" He was pointing to the pepper sauce.

"Hot. You wouldn't like it."

The little boy extended his hand. "Gimme."

Gurt put down her fork. "We say what in English when we ask for something?"

Manfred thought for a moment. "Please!"

Gurt looked at Lang. "He will too hot to eat make it."

Lang had gauged his son's determination and guessed otherwise. He extended the bottle and watched his son dribble a few experimental drops. Then, his tearing eyes never left his father's face as he shoveled the rest of the collards into his mouth.

"He will be a perfect copy of his father," Gurt commented dryly, "too stubborn to admit a mistake."

A trait often attributed to her countrymen. Who else would lose one war and begin another in exactly the same way?

Lang was deciding how well the observation would be received when Grumps leapt up from his customary spot under Manfred's chair and dashed toward the front door, barking.

"Another one of those big rats?" Gurt asked.

Lang was getting to his feet. "Possums. No, I don't think so."

He took a step in Grumps's direction. Through the window, the crescent moon was a diadem on the pond's black velvet. Lang thought he saw one, two, no, three shapes blot out the reflection and dissolve into the night.

What the hell?

The neighbors were definitely not the type to come calling uninvited.

But… Shit!

The cab, the fucking taxicab!

Someone had been waiting, knowing Lang would return to his condo sooner or later. All they'd had to do was follow the cab to the place he had met Gurt and then trail along behind until they were led here. Lang had never thought to look back to see if they had had a tail.

He had ignored agency training. He knew of more than one instance where the omission resulted in no chance to repeat the mistake.

Lang made a dive across the room, knocking the table onto its side among the clattering and shattering of dishes, glasses and silverware.

Gurt knew better than to take the time to ask questions. Instead, she snatched a bewildered Manfred from his chair and darted behind the overturned table as Lang joined them.

A hailstorm of bullets shook the frame house.

Splinters of wood, glass shards and bits of furniture flew through the air as though by the hand of an angry poltergeist. Sharp porcelain bits from the dinner dishes danced and hopped across the floor, all to the accompaniment of gunfire.

Lang snatched Manfred away from Gurt, shielding the child as best he could with his own body.

He alternately cursed himself for his inattention and was grateful to the cabin's prior owner for leaving the ugly but thick oak table.

The sheer helplessness was maddening. The closet where he kept the double-barrel shotgun he used to frighten off rather than harm deer marauding the summer vegetable garden was too far away. He'd never make it unharmed through the fusillade. Gurt's weapon was no doubt in her purse, useless in the bedroom.

It was quiet, the calm of a hurricane's eye, Lang was sure. The only sound was the terrified sobs of the little boy clinging to Lang as though he might fall into the abyss if he let go.

The stillness was more frightening than the storm.

Lang peeled the little fingers loose and handed the trembling child to Gurt. "Try to keep him quiet. I'm going to try to get to the shotgun before they charge the house."

She took her son, jiggling him gently. "It is not likely you will make it."

Gurt the optimist.

Lang was already on his way, crawling commando fashion across a floor littered with a forest of sharp objects. "What else do you suggest, fighting them off with spoons?"

Lang stood and almost fell the last few feet, snatched open the door and was jamming shells into the twin barrels when the bullet-ridden door slammed open.

In a single motion, he swiveled and dropped into a squat, groaning at the pain the sudden movement caused.

He saw only a blur in the doorway framed by the night, a smudge of camo shirt and pants, white face and a weapon.

He pulled one trigger.

The image staggered backward as he was pulling the second.

The twin blasts rebounded from the enclosure of walls and set his ears ringing and his eyes watering from the sting of cordite.

The open threshold was empty. The riddled door moaned as it swung drunkenly on its remaining hinge.

Lang jammed two more shells into place, dragging his cast as he stumbled toward Gurt and Manfred.

Suddenly, the entire outside seemed to light up with a wavering orange glow.

Lang didn't have to guess what was coming. Molotov cocktails, bottles filled with gasoline, fumes compressed by gas-soaked rags for fuses. They would explode like napalm upon impact just as they had when used sixty years ago by Russian partisans against German tanks.

And this cabin was a lot more flammable than any Panzer.

Lang glanced around.

He saw no options.

VII.

Lamar County, Georgia

Five Minutes Earlier

Larry Henderson considered himself a farmer just like his daddy and his daddy's daddy.

In Grandpa's day, cotton had been the crop. He had come home from fighting the Germans to find a combination of boll weevil and long-fibered Indian cotton grown in Texas had pretty much put him out of business. Subsequent efforts at peanuts, soybeans and even a peach orchard had provided a subsistence living, mostly through government subsidies.

Then the BIG CORPORATIONS (Larry always thought of them in capital letters) had bought up thousands of acres on which to not plant anything and the bulk of the county's allotment shares went to them. Gave new meaning to the lines from that old song, "He don' plant 'taters n' he don' plant cotton and them that does is soon forgotten."

By the time Daddy come along, Grandpa had had to adapt. He and Daddy planted corn. Good, sweet corn that fermented in the crick that ran through the property. Boil off a gallon or two and Daddy always said it was the best white in middle Georgia, well aged if the customer got there late in the day.

Daddy sold enough to buy a secondhand Ford every other year to make the weekly run to Barnesville, Hawkinsville and all those other 'villes where the thirst for good white lightnin' was never quenched.

By the time Daddy passed away, the coalition of Baptist preachers and bootleggers wasn't as strong as it used to be and the county went wet. Folks stopped drinking white. Instead, they bought bourbon, vodka, scotch. Government whiskey with the stamp on the bottle's cap.

The corn business was as dead as cotton and it was time to adapt again.

That's when Larry learned about marijuana, that five-leaved devil's weed folks up in Atlanta paid good money for.

The crick nourished the plants the same as it had fermented the corn. And it didn't take half the tending to. It grew like a weed, mostly because it was a weed.

Problem was the trouble what went with it. In Grandpa and Daddy's day, the local sheriff would bust up a still every once in a while, particularly around election time. Oh, he'd let word slip out a day or so in advance so everybody could go hide in the woods and nobody got hurt. He even arrested Daddy a couple of times, before he let him go. After all, being jailed for making good whiskey wasn't a shame, not like breaking a real law.

But marijuana was different.

Folks did get hurt.

There were the dealers in Atlanta, the ones Larry sold wholesale to. Their big shiny cars might as well have a sign on them telling the world what they did for a living. He never could see their eyes, because of the sunglasses they wore day or night. How was a man supposed to do business when he couldn't see the other man's eyes?

Larry'd heard stories about how these men would kill someone over a few ounces. He hoped they were just rumors but something in his gut told him not.

And the damn DEA would come down from Atlanta and raise hell. Those stupid McCracken boys, down toward Macon, actually shot a federal man.

Then the shit really hit the fan.

The federals shot one of the McCrackens and confiscated their farm.

How the hell did the government expect a man to make an honest living with his land gone?

Fact is, he couldn't. That's why the McCrackens took to raiding other folks' farms, stealing their whole crop of marijuana. They didn't much care who got hurt in the process, either.

Larry didn't much blame the McCrackens as he did the federals for fooling around in what should have been a local law enforcement issue, one that could've been handled just like it was in Daddy's day.

No matter, the McCrackens were why Larry kept Daddy's old Remington pump twelve gauge loaded and handy. The blueing had worn off the barrel long ago and the butt plate been screwed back on so many times it tended to wobble. But the bore didn't have a pit in it, shiny and smooth as the day it came from the Sears store over to Barnsville, and constant cleaning kept the ejection mechanism working like new.

Tonight he was glad he'd kept the thing in order.

Momma had been watching her reality shows on the dish TV (there weren't enough subscribers out here to warrant cable). He'd been in the kitchen fiddling with a cranky carburetor from one of the two small tractors and tasting a little bit of the white he still made for home use when from somewhere on the other side of the tree line that marked the crick, somebody was shooting up a storm. A gunshot in the night usually meant someone was headlighting deer to put meat on the table, but what Larry heard sounded like a war.

It would have been none of his business, if he hadn't set out a hundred or so new seedlings near where all the ruckus was coming from, enough crop to make a year's mortgage payments to the bank.

Or maybe buy Mamma something nice.

He shoved the pint bottle in a hip pocket, picked up the Remington, scooped a handful of OO shot from the box, and stuffed them in a pocket.

Mamma was standing by the door. "You gotta go?"

Mamma, Darleen was her name, had dropped out of the tenth grade to marry Larry when she got pregnant with Little Larry. That had been over twenty-five years ago. Now Little Larry was dead two years, died in some godforsaken place Larry'd never heard of in Iraq. Little Darleen was away at Georgia Southern College, the first Henderson to graduate from high school, let alone go to college.

All because of the marijuana that Larry didn't intend to let somebody else, McCrackens or otherwise, fuck with.

Larry nodded. "Prolly jes' some drunk, shootin' an' raisin' hell."

Neither of them believed that for a minute.

Mamma stepped aside, brushing. Larry's cheek with her lips. "You be careful, y'hear?"

He couldn't miss the anxiety in her eyes. "I promise."

Neither believed that, either.

Defending your land was the most important thing a man could do for his family. That's why Great-Great- Grandpa Henderson was staring at the Yankee cannon when he had borrowed a pencil to scribble his name on a scrap of paper and pin it to the back of his homespun shirt before he charged up a hill in Pennsylvania, knowing he'd likely not see Georgia's red clay again. The same reason Grandpa lost two toes to frostbite standing his ground in the snow at a little Belgian town named Bastogne and Daddy had spent two tours in a stinking Southeast Asian jungle.

There hadn't been a war for Larry to go to before he was too old but he would've gone had there been. A man defended his land, either on it or to prevent the other fella from getting to it.

Outside, the katydids continued their argument and a couple bullfrogs down to the pond were trying to get laid by the sound of the baritone calls. Larry glanced at the Ford Galaxie parked in the yard, decided he could get where he wanted to go quicker and quieter on foot and set out at a trot toward the sound of the shots.

A second or two later, he heard footsteps beside him.

Without turning his head, he whispered, "Jerranto, there ain't no need f'you to get inta this."

Jerranto had just shown up lookin' for work a year back at a time Larry definitely needed help with the crop. Not like he could advertise in the paper for field hands to grow what was flourishing down by the crick. The fact Jerranto didn't have a work permit or other papers made it unlikely he'd go to the law.

Jerranto was dark skinned with a doe-eyed wife carrying a baby. Larry neither knew nor cared where they'd come from, though the Mexican accent was a pretty strong clue. He'd given them the old sharecropper's cabin on the other side of the pond and the man worked hard or harder than Larry. He asked no questions, tended to his own business and was happy when Larry gave him part of the cash he got from the folks up in Atlanta.

Larry glanced over his shoulder. The sliver of a moon gave enough light to see a white T-shirt and gleam from the old hammer-firing double-barrel twelve gauge Larry had given him to shoot squirrels and the occasional deer when meat got scarce.

"No need a'tall," Larry repeated. "The federals catch you an' you're goin' back. Plus, Maria's about to have another baby."

There was also enough light to see the flash of white teeth that was an answer. Jerranto spoke enough English to get by but when he just wasn't going to listen, he gave that smile.

The two men could see only the outline of the trees, but the woods here were as familiar as their own bedrooms. They splashed across the crick and came to the edge of the tree line just as the shooting finally stopped.

"Shit!" Larry grunted.

Jerranto called the name of one of those saints he rattled off whenever he was surprised.

VIII.

Lamar County, Georgia

Lang was sliding along the wall toward the remains of the door, using his shotgun as a crutch. He knew the weapon would be no defense against firebombs, but he couldn't stand idle while his son wept with fear.

Instead of the anticipated crash of glass and whoosh of flames, shooting started again, this time the unmistakable boom of shotguns. He peeked through the gap between door and frame and saw the figure of a man sprawled in a puddle of hissing flames.

There was a muzzle flash from his left directed not at the house but at the woods to the right. It was answered both left and right by a barrage of smooth bore replies.

There was a scream and the sound of an engine cranking. Its lights out, some form of SUV crossed in front of the cabin and headed for the twin ruts that served as a driveway, rear end swaying as its tires fought for purchase in the loose soil. From the woods to Lang's left, a figure emerged, took deliberate aim at the vehicle and fired. The SUV swerved drunkenly and smashed into a pine tree.

Then there was silence, a quiet exaggerated by what had gone before. Lang could hear only the hiss of a shattered radiator and Manfred's terrified moans.

Lang took the opportunity to look back into what had been the living/dining room, his anxiety overcoming curiosity. "Manfred OK?"

"He's fine," Gurt answered. "And thanks for asking about me."

By the guttering flames that had been intended for the cabin, Lang saw the figure, a man, calmly walk to the wreck of the SUV, open the driver's door and snatch out a limp form, which fell into a heap.

At the same time, another man, this one considerably

smaller than the first, became visible approaching from the right.

Lang raised his shotgun. "I wouldn't come any closer if I were you."

There was a snort that possibly could have been a laugh and the first man made a display of leaning his weapon against a tree and raising his hands. "And I'd say 'thank you' was I you."

The man on the right also put down whatever he was carrying and raised his hands, too.

Both kept on walking toward the house.

The first one stepped over a form sprawled across the narrow front porch without giving it any particular notice. He could have stepped out of the film Deliverance. He was well over six feet and two hundred pounds, his face tanned by the sun. Blue eyes twinkled from under his John Deere cap. A reddish beard streaked with gray covered his lower face but not the broad lips that were curled into a smile. He was clad in bib overalls. His step had a confidence to it, a manner that seemed to say shooting a couple of men was a normal night's work.

Stereotypes exist. A lot. That's why they keep showing up in life.

The other man was much smaller and looked Latino. His eyes darted back and forth as though anticipating an attack at any moment.

The big man turned back and stooped to examine the body at his feet.

He stood and rolled it over with his brogan. "Ain't nobody I know."

Lang lowered his shotgun. "I'm happy for you."

Behind him he heard Gurt moving toward the bedroom and the gun in her purse.

Both strangers stopped at the door. "Mind if we come in?"

Lang stepped back and they both entered. The larger of the two surveyed the room. The cabin's thin frame and Sheetrock hadn't stopped many bullets. "Looks like somebody didn't much want you here."

Lang shrugged. "A man makes enemies."

The man in overalls continued to look around, nodding as though understanding a basic truth. "I'd say."

He turned his attention to Gurt as she entered the room, making no effort to hide his admiration. He doffed his cap. "Evenin', ma'am."

She held a SIG Sauer, having left Manfred in the other room despite his howls of protest. Lang felt relief as he saw Grumps slink out from behind the kitchen counter and follow the sounds of Manfred's displeasure. Everybody had made it through OK.

Gurt studied the stranger as intently as he was her. "You are to thank?"

He leaned forward, an imitation of a bear trying to bow. "My pleasure, ma'am" He extended a hand the size of a football. "Larry Henderson. I'm your neighbor."

"And a good one," Gurt said, smiling as she transferred the automatic to her left hand to slip her right into the huge paw.

If Larry noticed the weapon, he said nothing. Maybe pistol-packing mommas were the norm around here.

The little one said something Lang didn't catch.

Larry nodded. "He's right, we need to clean up this mess 'fore daylight"

Perplexed, Gurt glanced from one to the other. " 'Clean up'? Should we not call the police?"

Larry took off his cap again and clenched it in a hand, a gesture Lang guessed was a habit. He shifted from one foot to the other like a schoolboy caught passing a note in class. "Well, ma'am, I'm not sure thass a good idea. See, first, we ain' got no phones out here an'…" He shuffled shoes die size of rowboats. Then he spoke, staring into Lang's eyes as if seeking an answer to an unasked question. "An', well, I'd soon as not involve the law if you take my meaning An' if done, 'tis best done quickly."

Was that a line from Shakespeare? Unlikely. But Lang got the message loud and clear. Whatever Larry was doing was something that the long arm of the law wasn't going to help. The man had just saved Lang's ass by blowing away a couple of unknowns, voting them totally off the island- Now he was asking, almost pleading, not to involve the cops.

"Will not somebody come looking for them?" Gurt asked.

Larry shook his head. "Doubt it. They're all dressed the same like some sorta army an' carryin' those Russian guns…" "AK-47's?"

"Thass the one. Ennyhow, ain' nobody from 'round here. They's from off. I kin take a tractor, tow that car so deep in the woods they's have to send in th' hounds to find it, bury those guys where nobody'd ever look even if they wanted to find 'em. An' I got a feelin' nobody does."

There was a certain logic to what Lang's new friend said. If, as he was certain, these would-be assassins were from the same group that had killed Eon, it was unlikely anyone would be asking questions about their disappearance. Attempted arson, illegal automatic weapons and botched murders would invite the unwanted attention not only of local law enforcement but of the ATF, FBI and other federal and state agencies, not to mention the press. What Lang had in mind could not be accomplished under the scrutiny of an alphabet soup of law enforcement agencies, either.

Larry was looking around the cabin again. "Wouldn't be smart to stay here tonight."

"There is a Gasthaus nearby?" Gurt asked.

Larry gave that sort of bend/bow again. "Why, ma'am, I'd be pleasured if you'd stay with me. Mamma'd love the…"

Manfred walked slowly out of the bedroom escorted by Grumps.

Larry gave a grin of sheer joy. "No argument, now. Mamma'd love nothin' more'n than to have a tyke in the house agin."

Hours later, Gurt, Lang and Manfred had been fussed over, looked after and generally made to feel at home in a small but comfortable house while Larry and Jerranto went about work Lang had no desire to question. The living room/dining room featured a wall of shelves filled with books, hardly what Lang expected from what he had seen of his new friend and benefactor. Closer inspection revealed inexpensive and well-worn works of Shakespeare and Milton, some of the metaphysical poets as well as Shelly, Byron and Keats. Somebody in the family had a love of literature as well as shotguns.

He hadn't heard Darleen come up behind him. "Larry's grandaddy's books. 'Fore TV, he read out those book ever night. Larry's daddy did, too. Larry done read ever one of 'em, most two, three times."

That line about done quickly. It was from Shakespeare, perhaps Macbeth? Lang's surprise must have shown, for she added, "Jus' 'cause Larry couldn' afford college don' mean he's ignorant."

Lang wondered how many college graduates could even name the metaphysical poets.

"Not Tara," Gurt, whose favorite book was Gone with the Wind, noted, "but is Southern hospitality I have read of. It really-"

Larry's return interrupted the comment. He stood on a narrow plank porch, using a spade to knock dirt from his shoes before he swung the screen door open. He grinned at Lang and reached into a pocket in the back of his clay-encrusted overalls, producing an unlabeled bottle half full of white fluid.

He proffered it to Lang. "Have a swig. Calm your nerves."

Lang accepted hesitantly. He unscrewed the cap and smelled something like gasoline. "What is it?"

"Georgia white," the man said as proudly as though offering a fifty-year-old Bordeaux. "Made by my family for years." He nodded toward the bookshelves. "Not an eye of newt in the whole process."

Lang was hesitant to try it, but it seemed tactless to refuse the man who had not only saved their lives but also was putting a roof over their heads for the night. Through compressed lips, he let a little trickle into his mouth.

Eye of newt notwithstanding, the brew of Macbeth's witches couldn't have been more potent.

At first, he wanted to spit. Then he was afraid to for fear of setting the place on fire. His eyes blurred with tears as he forced the burning liquid down his throat. He felt as though flames were coursing down his intestinal tract.

Larry was watching every move with the anticipation of someone expecting plaudits. "Well, how was it?"

Lang wiped his lips with the back of a hand and gasped for air to cool his interior. "Just right," he choked.

"Jes' right?"

"It was any better, you wouldn't have wanted to share it. Any worse, it would've killed me."

IX.

Peachtree Center

227 Peachtree Street

Atlanta, Georgia

The Next Morning

Sara looked up from her desk in surprise as Lang hobbled through the door to the suite and made his way to his office.

"You aren't due back for another two weeks," she admonished. "You-"

"… are giving our clients a bonus."

Lang's injuries entitled him to a prolonged leave of absence from the various courts. The nonviolent nature of the swindlers, stock cheats and other white-collar criminals Lang represented meant most could get bail. Once free, there was little upside to a trial.

Lang could almost hear Sara's jaw click shut as Gurt followed.

If Sara was surprised to see her, she concealed it well. "Hello," she said tentatively.

Gurt was not her favorite person. Even though Gurt had been nothing if not kind and polite, Lang's longtime secretary made little effort to conceal her opinion of Lang and Gurt's previous living arrangements. Lang also suspected a small bit of jealousy. Before Gurt's first arrival in Atlanta, the white-haired grandmother had pretty much run Lang's personal life since Dawn's death. Gurt was a definite challenge to her abundant mothering instincts.

Any hint of hostility fell away when Sara spied Manfred. "And who might this be?"

Manfred bowed slightly and extended a hand. "I am named Manfred Fuchs."

"Manfred Reilly," Lang corrected.

Sara's eyes widened as she hastily looked from father to son and back again. She would have been blind to miss the resemblance. "When…? Who…? How…?"

"Sometime ago, Lang and in the normal manner," Gurt said.

"But, but you were never…"

"Married?" Gurt smiled. "That is to the biological process irrelevant."

Not to Sara. Lang had often observed that years of membership in a Southern Baptist church made Sara worry too much that someone somewhere somehow was having fun. True or not, he tried not to show his amusement as her religion wrestled with her love for small children.

The latter won.

She fished a cellophane-wrapped peppermint from the bowl on her desk and extended one toward Manfred, who looked at the proffered treat and then at his mother.

Gurt apparently was willing to accept the peace offering. "What do you say?"

"Danke, er, thank you."

Sara pulled the candy back. "It comes at a price. Come give your auntie Sara a hug."

For the moment, the Gurt vs. Sara battle was over. Lang had enjoyed the mini drama long enough. He had come for a specific purpose and it wasn't to introduce his new family. He limped into his office and shut the door behind him. Ignoring two stacks of pink phone-message slips, he opened his center desk drawer and reached inside. His groping fingers found a catch and there was a click as a false back popped open. From it he extracted a worn address book. Thumbing the pages, he found what he was looking for and punched numbers into the telephone's keyboard, beginning with the 202 D.C. area code.

He knew the actual phone that he was calling could be located anywhere in the world, connected by a series of shifting random relays that would make any call from the person he was seeking totally untraceable. He waited for the third ring, after which there was only a beep. No voice, no message. He keyed in his own number and hung up.

It took about two minutes before Sara buzzed him. From the noise in the background, she, Gurt and Manfred were having a swell time. "Number one for you. Man named Berkley. Wouldn't say who he's with or what he wanted other than speaking to you. Want to take it or should I tell him you're out of the office?"

Lang was already reaching for the phone to press the button that would connect him. "I'll take it. Thanks."

He pushed the first line button. "Miles! My gatekeeper tells me you wouldn't tell her what you wanted or who you were with!"

There was a slight pause, confirming Lang's guess the call was going through multiple relays. "I coulda told her, Lang, but then I'd hafta kill her. How's it goin' with you?"

"I need a little help."

Again the pause before Miles's drawl. "Damn! An' here I was thinkin' you'd called 'cause you need my wise counsel an' sage advice."

Lang smiled. Miles Berkley was still the same bullshit artist. "Miles, about two months ago a wealthy English philanthropist, name of Eon Weatherston-Wilby, was kidnapped from the British Museum and subsequently murdered."

"I think I remember. Why do all those rich Brits have two las' names, anyway?"

"Same reason Southerners like us have two last names instead of a first and last. Langford and Miles instead of Joe and Frank."

"Damn," Miles said, "an' I'd always thought it was to cover somebody's ass when they weren't sure who the father was."

Lang chuckled. "Like I said, Miles, I need your help."

This time the pause was longer than usual.

"Lang, you know I'll do what I can, but my employer takes a real dim view of sharing information with unauthorized persons."

Or with the rest of the United States government for that matter. "Let me tell you what I need. I believe Eon was killed because of certain ancient documents he had acquired and was donating to the museum, perhaps because he knew what was in those documents. I'd like to know where he got them."

Another long pause. "A little out of my bailiwick, Lang."

"Oh, come on, Miles! You guys track large transfers of money like a hen with one chick. I recall, it was you that warned of nine-eleven because you'd noticed a transfer of cash from al Qaeda accounts."

"Shucks, weren't nuthin'."

"False modesty doesn't become you, Miles. If the powers that be had listened to you…"

"OK, OK, flattery appreciated."

Manfred walked into the room and froze, awestruck by the view provided by the floor-to-ceiling glass. Lang pointed to a helicopter making a pickup from the roof of a nearby building.

"So, Miles can you help?"

"Officially, no. But I'd like to renew the friendship, Lang. Haven't laid eyes on you in years. You and Gurt still…"

Gurt's looks were famous throughout the agency, as was the fact that Lang was the only one of the select members of that group who had ever gotten further than a refusal to do more than have lunch. His post-agency relationship with her was, he was certain, the subject of company gossip.

"We're getting along fine, Miles." He watched Manfred staring outside. "Better than you could believe. Thanks for asking. Now, about Eon Weatherston-Wilby…"

"Like I said, I'd like to keep up the relationship with an old friend. You got a cell phone number?"

Less than half an hour later, Gurt was driving the rented SUV back to the residence hotel that would serve as home for the next few days. Lang planned to move frequently until the danger was eliminated.

Gurt was thinking the same thing. "We will live in hotels for how long?"

The prospect of one set of interchangeable living quarters after another was bleak at best. It would be particularly disturbing to watch his newfound son try to understand why he was suddenly an urban gypsy. Not to mention the bribes he would pay desk clerks to take Grumps. "Until we can figure out what to do, learn enough to go after whoever is trying to kill us."

"Kill you," she corrected. "Manfred and I were not in the country even when the bomb did your condo."

"Whoever shot up the cabin wasn't making distinctions."

Gurt nodded. "Collateral damage. They didn't care."

Lang pointed to a strip center on the right side of the road. "Pull in there."

Gurt did as she was told, parked in a space perpendicular to the curb and looked up at a sign advertising the best ribs in town. "You have hunger?"

He indicated another neon sign in a window that announced, pawn! tvs! electronics! guns! "No, I have a need to be armed."

On the door, a sign informed the entrant that (a) the place was under video surveillance, (b) all firearms must be in cases or holsters and (c) Visa and Mastercard were equally welcomed.

A bell tinkled as Lang entered. A glass case displayed cheap watches and jewelry. Along one wall hung every imaginable form and shape of guitar, trumpet, trombone and several musical instruments Lang didn't recognize. Opposite was a rack of rifles and shotguns.

A man emerged from the shadows at the back of the shop. "Good mornin'! What can I-" He stopped, staring. "Langford Reilly! How have you been, Counselor?"

Lang took a very hairy hand in his own. "Pretty good, Monk. I take it you're keepin' your nose clean?"

"You bet. Not so much as a parking ticket since you got me off." He noticed Lang's difficulty in moving. "What happened to your leg?"

"That's why I've come to take you up on your offer of a favor if I needed one."

William "Monk" Vester, one of Lang's earlier clients.

Also one of the city's more entrepreneurial fences, Monk had been charged with specifying items to be stolen by a cadre of burglars. The case had been airtight with the housebreakers lining up to roll over on their compatriot in exchange for lighter sentences. Lang's only hope had been the incompetence of the Fulton County prosecutor's office. His reliance had been rewarded: somehow the exhibit numbers had become so mixed up it was impossible to ascertain with certainty which object had come from which victim or, for that matter, if the items had been stolen at all.

In Atlanta, Fulton County, it was not only better that a hundred guilty men go free than one innocent man be convicted, it was a near certainty. The district attorney could have screwed up the trespassing prosecution of Attila the Hun.

"Owe you one, sure." Monk's head was bobbing as though on a spring.

Lang suspected the sobriquet came from his former client's resemblance to something simian. The hunched back made overly lengthy arms seem longer still, perhaps long enough to drag on the floor. The hairline seemed to end just above eyes that never stayed one place very long, shifting as though in perpetual search. Thick black hair covered every visible part of his body: his arms, his hands, most of his face.

"So, I'm here to call it due," Lang said.

Again the bobblehead doll effect. "Yeah, yeah, anytime."

"I need a gun and I need it fairly quickly."

The smile vanished into the heavy black beard. The man was clearly torn between doing a service for a friend and the possible hazards. "I dunno. I don't make you wait like the law says, I'm in trouble again, lose license."

Lang stepped over to a glass counter much smaller than that containing the jewelry. "Let's see what you got." He pointed. "Let me see that Browning HP 35 nine millimeter."

"Good gun," Monk murmured as he loped to the other side and turned a key. "Thirteen shots…"

"I know," Lang said impatiently, extending his hand.

The feel of the weapon brought back memories. This was the model he had first been issued by the agency before the lighter SIG Sauer with its larger clip had replaced it. Lang pulled back the slide, held the gun up to the ceiling lights and peeked down the muzzle. The grooving was barely worn, the automatic clean, as though its former owner was aware that a well-maintained weapon was a reliable weapon.

He slid the action closed with a distinctive click. "How much?"

Monk pursed his lips and reached over his shoulder to scratch his back, an ape's gesture if Lang had ever seen one.

"Three fifty. For you, an even three."

Lang would have bet Monk had loaned no more than a hundred and a half but he had neither the time nor inclination to haggle. "Done. But I need it now."

Monk produced a sheaf of forms. "ATF requires a background check. Meybbe I can finish before you leave, meybbe three days."

Lang shook his head. "I may not even be in the country in three days."

"No problem. Jus' fill in the forms an' give me a check with a blank date. You don' pass the background check, my ass is so busted."

Gratefully, Lang took the forms and began. "Don't worry. I wouldn't be an attorney if I'd been convicted of a felony."

Monk looked at him, deadpan. "Bein' a lawyer don't mean you haven't been committed to a mental institution or any of those other things."

Lang peeled off an extra fifty after counting off three one-hundred-dollar bills. "To compensate for losing all that sleep."

Then he stopped beside the door, fascinated. He picked up a brass-headed cane, an old-fashioned gentlemen's walking stick. "How much?"

"I'll throw it in f 'nother twenty-five."

Lang examined it more carefully, noting the head could be detached from the cane itself. "Done!"

Monk stuffed the bills into a pocket without counting. "Say, know the bes' way to get a lawyer down from a tree?"

Here it came.

"Cut the rope."

Whatever happened to blonde jokes?

Browning in one pocket, a box of ammunition in the other, Lang limped outside leaning on his cane and used his arms to pull himself into the passenger seat of the SUV. "OK, got my business done. Let's go."

Gurt didn't turn her head. "As soon as I parked here, the white Chevrolet parked in front of the place that advertises ribs."

Lang was tugging at his shoulder harness. "So? Lots of people like barbecue for lunch."

"No one has gotten out."

Without turning his head, Lang could see two men in the front seat. Neither seemed to be doing anything.

Lang struggled back out of the car. "Wait a minute."

Monk was fading back into the shadows as Lang reentered. "You unhappy already?"

Lang shook his head. "Need another favor."

He told the pawnbroker what he wanted.

Once Lang was back in the SUV, Gurt continued watching the Chevrolet. "And now?"

"We wait."

But not for long.

A bilious green Caddy convertible eased out from behind the strip of businesses. From the size and gigantic tail fins, Lang would have guessed its origins lay somewhere in the late fifties. Monk had had the car ever since Lang had known him.

The huge automobile stopped just behind the Chevy, blocking it in its perpendicular space. Monk got out and started to go into the barbeque joint.

"Now," Lang said.

Oblivious to the shouts from the barricaded Chevrolet, Monk was entering the rib shack, a man making a quick stop to pick up a take-out lunch. Lang memorized the Chevy's license plate, although he was certain it would lead to a dead end.

Gurt was about to say something when Lang's cell phone pealed. It was Miles.

"What took you so long to get back to me?" Lang asked.

Miles snorted. "I didn't exactly have the full resources of the company behind me, y'know."

"But you did the best you could."

"As always. Where do you want the info sent?"

Lang thought a moment. Miles's reluctance to pass anything along over the phone was understandable. Worldwide, all electronic transmissions sent by satellite were monitored. Since this included well over 90 percent of all communications, Echelon, as the program was named, literally eavesdropped on that part of the world that no longer used wires to transmit messages. It was located in northern England and shared only by the English-speaking nations. The Achilles' heel of the project was the sheer volume of communications. Thousands of computers were programmed to record each message to be searched by other machines for keywords or phrases in a hundred or more languages. Still, the process took a day or so, and "bursts," those messages condensed into a single electronic beep, were not translatable into words.

Keywords or not, Miles was wise to take no chances. Passing oat information to the unauthorized was at best a firable offense. At worst, it could lead to criminal prosecution.

"Overnight air to my office." Lang gave him the address.

x.

Magnolia Motel

US Highway 41

Marietta, Georgia

That Evening

Not the Disneyland Hotel, it wasn't a lot to look at: a room whose faint odor of cheap perfume hinted at a usage by persons who would be acquainted for a short period of time rather than by families. The suggestion was enforced by the fly-specked sign behind the sole desk clerk, in god we trust, all others pay cash. The room's scruffy shag carpet, the tattered spreads on the two sagging double beds gave mute testimony that the Magnolia, located on what had once been a main thoroughfare between Marietta and Atlanta, had seen better days.

But the positive aspects outweighed the pervasive atmosphere of sleaze: The proprietor clearly expected cash, a necessity in the hot-pillow trade, thereby leaving no credit card trail for Lang's pursuers to follow. Parking behind the cinder block building lessened discovery of the marital infidelities and indiscretions that Lang guessed were the place's stock in trade. If the moans piercing the thin walls were any indication, business was good.

Lang had produced his money clip and peeled off several bills. The proprietor leered at Gurt with such lust, he seemed surprised when he noticed the child holding on to her hand.

No doubt assuming some sort of perversion was about to take place, he turned his attention back to Lang. "Don' 'low any loud noises. No dope 'lowed on th' premises. Unnerstan?"

Lang assured him he did.

The first thing Gurt had done after entering the room was to put down a suitcase and began stripping one of the beds.

"Now what?" Lang asked.

She was shaking a sheet as Manfred watched. "I wish to rid the bedclothes of any life-forms other than ones I can speak to."

Lang hadn't considered this possibility.

Grumps apparently thought this was some kind of game. He began to bark. The noise next door continued unabated.

Lang kneeled to quiet the dog. He doubted the Magnolia would eject any paying guest but there was no sense taking chances.

When Gurt had made sure the linen was free of unwanted fauna, she put her hands on her hips and gazed around the room. "With you is always first-class, no?"

Lang was in the tiny bathroom, trying to decide if the shower was hygienic enough for Manfred's use. A colony of mildew was prospering nicely on the plastic curtain and a circle of rust decorated the drain. "When you're on the run, you can't always be choosy."

Gurt stuck her head in the door. "And how long on the run' will we be?"

Lang wished he knew.