The Julian secret

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Flumicino, Italy

Leonardo da Vinci International Airport

The present

Bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, Lang trudged down the concourse, cursing whoever had designed the airport so that nothing was near anything else. One of the newer passenger terminals in Europe, customs and immigration were nowhere near flights arriving from non European Union countries, the flights that would need those services. Likewise, the train station connected to Rome was far closer to domestic arrivals, those passengers most likely to have left cars at the airport.

The Byzantine mind was alive and well in Italy.

In a rare moment of self-assessment, he realized he was simply in a foul mood, the result of plain bad luck combined with his own decisions.

First, he had decided to use the Couch identity provided by Reavers. No point in having his own name on a passenger manifest, readily available to anyone who knew how to hack into the airline's less-than-secure computer, or the charge appear on his own credit card, equally accessible. Let Reavers get "committed" by picking up the ticket.

Of course, the fictional Mr. Couch was not a frequent flyer and therefore was beneath the minimal notice given platinum, gold, or silver flyers. Ineligible to use the limited facilities of the preferred customer lounge, Mr. Couch had experienced the endless security lines reserved for nonprivileged passengers before spending an hour or so sharing the gate area with screaming children, blaring but unintelligible announcements, and overpriced fast food.

He had also been treated to passengers bellowing things like "Dallas, not Dulles!" or "Tampa, not Tempe!" into cell phones-a response to the airline's mechanized-voice reservation system that made it difficult if not impossible to speak to a human being.

Good goes around, but nobody at the airline wanted to talk about it.

The fact that it had been his decision to keep a low profile by entrusting himself to the uncaring hands of Atlanta's dominant carrier rather than arrive by Gulfstream did nothing to diminish his temper.

Even before arriving at the airport for the Washington leg, he had had signals that this was not going to be an enjoyable experience.

Since the Porsche's destruction, Lang had let Park Place's attendants park and retrieve the Mercedes, both from an assumption that another potential assassin would see the futility of a second car bomb and because he simply didn't care how the young men treated what he viewed as simple transportation.

This particular morning, the Mercedes had chosen not to respond to the electronic device that unlocked the car. His call to the dealership, one of several owned by the same company, had left him with the impression that the service department viewed his continuing problems as somehow his fault rather than designer-induced over-sophistication.

Mercedes-Benz CLK: the revenge of the Third Reich.

It had been no surprise that the Dulles-Rome flight had been delayed three hours for a mechanical problem the pilot described as "a minor glitch." The tone of the man's voice said it was no surprise to him, either.

Time to spare, go by air.

Forgetting life's sharper points for the moment, Lang set down his single bag to buy a cup of espresso at the coffee bar in the rail terminal. A large, barnlike structure with a glass roof, the airport station contained a few shops and four tracks, all of which went to Termini, Rome, departing at approximately twenty-minute intervals. The only question was whether to take express or local. Lang took the first departure.

Staring out of the window at the weed-covered switching yards and intermediate stations, Lang wondered how many times he had taken this ride. Shortly before leaving the Agency, he had brought Dawn here. Her first trip outside the United States, she had taken delight in even the dreary scenery that surrounds most rail right of-ways. Before arrival at the final stop, she had become radiant at the sight of the first antiquity, a bland section of ancient brick that had been part of the city's wall.

Lang had always heard Rome was a city of churches, but he had never realized how many. Dawn had insisted on seeing the places of worship of the Jesuits, the Dominicans, and the Capuchins. They visited churches boasting sculpture by Michelangelo and Bernini and paintings by Caravaggio and Raphael. Before the first morning was over, Madonnas, martyred saints, and incidents from the Gospels melded into a religious blur. Never had Lang been so thankful for the three- to four-hour afternoon period when museums, businesses, and especially churches were chuiso, closed.

But he had never let Dawn know, feeding on her delight like a starving man presented with a banquet.

Only last year, he had been on this very same train, unknowingly about to revive a relationship with Gurt dormant since he had met Dawn. He and Gurt had made wild love in a small pension in the Trastevere District, ridden her motorcycle into the countryside, and hidden in an Agency safe house just across from the Villa Borghese, Rome's largest park.

Now Gurt, like Dawn, was gone.

He could take no vengeance against the cancer that had stolen his wife, but he could, and, by God, would, make those responsible for Gurt pay. Only the apprehensive look on the face of the woman seated facing him made him aware that his teeth were grinding. At the same time, he noticed the pain of fingernails digging into the heel of each hand.

An hour later, he was unpacking at the Hotel Hassler, a slightly past-its-prime, very American-style hotel at the head of the Spanish Steps. It was the sort of place Couch might stay, particularly if he was on business and, like most Americans, more than willing to compromise quality for the certainty he would not he confronted by people speaking only the native tongue.

Lang had requested a room on the side facing away from the steps, fully aware that those flights of marble constituted the place for younger tourists to-congregate, play loud music, smoke, and photograph one another.

Finished unpacking the small bag, he stepped into the hall, looking both ways. He saw a maid's linen trolley but no maid. Bending over to shield what he was doing, he pulled a hair from his head, ran a saliva-moistened finger along it, and stuck it to the top of the doorknob. Once dry, that hair would fall at the slightest touch. Unlikely the telltale would be needed, since no one in Rome knew who Mr. Couch really was, but old habits died hard.

He checked his watch. If he didn't dally, he would make it on time.

A little over a mile away was a cartoonlike carving of an elephant with an obelisk on its back. The monks of the monastery that had become the church Santa Maria sopra Minerva had commissioned Bernini to grace the small square in front with the animal and then proceeded to insist the original plan was unstable, unsuitable, and overpriced. Not lacking a sense of humor, the sculptor had adorned the supposed symbol of wisdom and piety with a trunk of serpentine proportions and ears that could well have been the inspiration for Dumbo.

That had been the thought for centuries, anyway.

Then, in the recent past, excavation for enlargement of the Vatican's underground parking lot had uncovered a large beast first thought to be the remains of some sort of dinosaur. Quick research of the vast papal library had revealed that the king of Portugal had made a gift to one of the several Pope Leos of an albino dwarf elephant. The pontiff named the beast Hano, and elephant and man shared such an affection that the little pachyderm followed his master everywhere, including papal masses.

Lang never passed this way without a smile.

Just behind the piazza was a small store that sold ecclesiastical vestments and paraphernalia. Before entering, Lang debated: a simple black shirt with clerical collar, or full cassock, perhaps with biretta, the three-ridged square hat favored by many European priests? He chose the latter along with a simple ebony-beaded rosary. He was tempted to include a Bible printed in Italian but decided keeping his hands free might prove a better choice.

In a half hour, he was on his way. The shopkeeper had asked not a single question nor requested any documentation of Lang's ordination into the Church. He did, however, carefully examine and count each. euro with which Lang paid.

Lang was uncertain exactly what this said about the clergy.

Package under his arm, Lang stopped at a favorite pizzeria just off the Piazza Della Rotunda. There were only two tables, both outside on the street. Both were filled with chatting American college students. He took his square of anchovy, pepper, and onion to enjoy while sitting on the. edge of a fountain and looking at the Pantheon, Rome's oldest structure still in use. His pleasure, if not his sense of history, was undiminished by the presence of a McDonald's on the very same piazza.

The Pantheon was erected by the Emperor Hadrian a hundred years before Constantine, a temple for not one but all the gods. Every emperor after him erased his predecessor's name from over the door and carved his own. When Rome became Christian, the building became a church. Michelangelo studied that dome to learn how to do one for the new St. Peter's. In the eighteenth century, Bernini was hired to put bell towers on each side. The people ridiculed them, called them "donkey's ears." They came down. The hole in the center of the dome allowed sunlight into an otherwise windowless single room.

The massive bronze doors, the symmetry of the round building, as well as its antiquity had always had a salutary effect on Lang. He could feel the anger associated with the trip melt away like smoke in a breeze. Thankful Rome's fountains flowed with potable water, he cupped his hands to drink and washed the last of the fish taste away before using the thin square of paper that had served as a plate to wash his hands.

He took his time, wandering familiar streets, many of which were too narrow to admit sunlight for more than a few minutes a day. Far too confined for automotive traffic, scooters buzzed by unfazed. Lang was careful to back up to a wall as each Vespa passed, fully aware that the little machines provided a great getaway from purse or parcel-snatching. He also remembered an attempted stabbing by a killer on a similar contraption.

He 'was not going to be distracted by his love for the Eternal City.

Back at the hotel, he stood at the front desk, awaiting his room key. He happened to notice a newspaper with block headlines taking up the top fold. Below was a vaguely familiar face, a slightly chubby man in an expensive suit.

Lang held the paper up for the clerk to see. "Who's this?"

The young man didn't have to look up from his computer screen. "The prime minister. He is about to be indicted for taking pay, er, pay…"

"Bribes?" Lang supplied, reaching for the key a young woman was handing him.

"Bribes, yes."

Lang couldn't recall the man's name, but he recalled him as being, if not one of the richest men in Italy, a conservative (at least by European standards) and a mainstay in a country that changed governments more regularly than its men changed their shirts.

The telltale was as he had left it.

Without taking off his clothes, Lang stretched out on the bed and was asleep before he was aware of being drowsy.