The Pegasus Secret

1

Dallas, Texas

The next day

Lang hated flying. He felt helpless and out of control belted into an airline seat.

Gloomily, he sat in the waiting area for gate twenty-two of the American Airlines terminal at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport and watched the man with the little boy.

The guy, mid-forties, mousey gray hair retreating from front and top, slightly paunchy, was the sort who would be the last to be noticed in a room full of people, just the sort of person Lang had been trained to watch first. The child was blond, four or five, and didn't look enough like the man to be related. Having the kid along, though, was good cover. Somebody had been clever.

Lang had paid them minimal attention when the man had puffed his way to the Delta counter in Atlanta and bought the tickets, explaining he had to make the flight, a family emergency.

An emergency where?

Lang had booked the ticket to Dallas, paid by credit card, gone to the American counter and used cash and a false, if expired, passport from his past as ID to buy a seat from Dallas to Fort Lauderdale. He planned to cab from Lauderdale to Miami International, then catch a plane to Rome via JFK. The circuitous routing had paid off in shaking the tail out of the crowd of travelers.

In Atlanta, there had been no reason to consider the pair to be anything other than what they seemed. When they had gotten on the same tram in Dallas to go from the Delta terminal to the American terminal, Lang became suspicious. They had not had time to collect the single bag they had checked in Atlanta, although the boy had the same bright yellow backpack he had carried on board. Seeing them at the gate for the flight to Lauderdale got Lang's attention.

Even with the airlines' price wars, Atlanta-Lauderdale via Dallas was a bit unusual.

Lang watched the guy go to the bank of pay phones, no doubt to alert someone to be on standby in Florida. The fact that he chose a land line rather than a cellular denoted that he was either one of the few people in America without a mobile unit or wanted security for his call. Lang pretended interest in the view of the tarmac from a window next to the pay phones, a position from which he could hear every word. The man glared and hung up without saying good-bye.

When the man took the little boy to the men's room, Lang went to a newsstand and bought a USA Today. He browsed the candy, selecting three foil-wrapped Peppermint Patties. Then he followed the guy into the toilet and shut himself into a stall. From the outside, it would look as though Lang was reading the paper as he did his business.

Lang only needed a little luck for the guy not to have time to make another call before he got back.

Returning to the waiting area, Lang glanced around as though trying to find a seat. He selected one next to the kid, who was engrossed in a Game Boy. Moving the child's backpack slightly with his foot, Lang sat so that the little boy was between Lang and the boy's companion. Lang swiveled in the seat so that the yellow pack was partially obscured by his legs.

"Whatcha playin'?" Lang asked the child.

He wasn't shy of strangers. "In-ig-ma," he said without looking up.

Lang watched the blips scramble across the tiny screen. He could feel the adult's question: Did Lang know? But there wasn't a whole lot Lang's shadow could do without attracting attention.

"How d'you play?" Lang asked innocently.

He listened to an explanation surprising in its detail for a child that age.

"Sounds like it would be more fun for two," Lang suggested.

"That's mighty nice of you, mister," the man said, "but you don't have to…"

Lang couldn't place the accent but it certainly didn't come from Atlanta.

"But I want to," Lang said."Reminds me of my own son." He managed a pained expression. "He was about this age when he died of leukemia."

The eyes of the white haired woman in the seat across from Lang instantly glistened. There was no way the man could gracefully get Lang to leave the little boy alone. From the expression on his face, that had occurred to the minder, too.

"May I?" Lang held out a hand.

The child looked at the man for approval and handed the game over.

"Oops!" Lang dropped it.

As he reached under the seat to retrieve the little electronic box, Lang slid something out of his pants leg and into his hand.

Lang suddenly jerked erect and pointed down the concourse. "Isn't that Mel Gibson?"

Heads snapped around in unison. Lang slipped the object into the backpack and retrieved the Game Boy.

"Guess I was mistaken," Lang admitted sheepishly. "Show me one more time how this works."

Lang was getting soundly thrashed when the flight was called a few minutes later.

As a first-class passenger, Lang went to the head of the boarding line, noting the table that, since 9/11, always stood ready for random searches. When he handed his ticket to the gate attendant, he also leaned forward and spoke in low tones. From her reaction, he might have made a lewd proposition.

She hurriedly turned her duties over to one of the ticket agents and scurried away.

Lang waved to the little boy and boarded.

He was sipping Scotch and trying to find his place in a paperback novel when a woman slipped a thin bag into the overhead bin and slid into the seat beside him. She wore a business suit, a matching gray jacket and skirt. Lipstick and a slight blush were her only makeup. Her ash-blond hair was gathered into a chignon by a tortoiseshell comb. The important finger sported a diamond that anywhere other than Texas would have been vulgar. She was young, twenty-something, but puffing like an octogenarian climbing his third flight of stairs.

Lang smiled at her as he put down the drink glass. "Sounds like you ran the whole way."

She gulped a lungful of air. "I thought they were gonna cancel the flight and I have to, absolutely have to, get to Fort Lauderdale."

If the ring hadn't been a tip that she was a native of the Lone Star State, the flat drawl was.

Lang mustered his very best surprised expression. "Cancel the flight?"

The few stray hairs outside the comb waved like an insect's legs as she bobbed her head. "Guy tried to smuggle a gun on board."

"No!"

"Yeah, in his son's backpack. Somebody tipped Security to bring one of those portable X-ray machines an' there it was, big as life, right in the child's pack."

Lang gasped in amazement. "You see it, the gun?"

"No, but they, the security people, were hauling the guy away, said they were gonna search the kid's backpack in a secure area. Wanted to make sure he didn't have a chance to use a weapon with all the people around, I guess. Feel real sorry for the little fella."

Lang lifted sympathetic hands. "Pretty low, involving a child in something like that."

It was at that moment he noticed he still had smudges of chocolate under his fingernails. It had gotten there while he sat on the john, waiting for his palms' heat to soften the outside of the Peppermint Patties so he could fashion them into the L shape of a pistol before using the tinfoil wrappers, highly X-ray-reflective, to encase his creation.

International intelligence or not, they could be outwitted.

Lang stood, stooping to avoid bumping his head. "Reckon I've got time to wash my hands before they make us strap this airplane on?"

1

Leonardo da Vinci International, Rome

The next morning

Rumpled and gritty-eyed, Lang disembarked, relishing the cool spring morning after the fetid, recirculated air of the L-1011. It was a relief to be outside even if the smell of diesel fuel filled his nose. At the base of the stairs pushed against the plane, he watched vehicles scurry across Leonardo da Vinci International like bugs across a pond's surface. Along the airport's perimeter, perpetual smog turned distant trees into gray lace.

A herd of busses chugged to a stop and his fellow travelers clamored aboard. For reasons as mysterious as the Poussin, the Italians rarely used jetways that allowed passengers to enter the terminal directly from the aircraft. He suspected the owner of the bus company was well connected.

Speaking of connected, the Rome airport had been a joke in years past, construction ongoing in what Lang and his peers had assumed was a permanent political boondoggle. Now it was finished. White concrete slabs, bowlike angles and portholes of tinted glass gave the international terminal a slightly nautical appearance. Inside, another surprise awaited. Elevators, escalators and stairs were also new, although their multidirectional confusion-was much the same as before.

Under the bored gaze of customs officials at the nothing-to-declare exit, Lang submitted his passport to cursory inspection before ducking into the first available men's, both from necessity and to see who from his flight might follow.

No one.

Opening his single bag, he swapped his Levi's and button-down shirt for French jeans and a shirt with the distinctive Italian taper. Oxblood Cole Haan loafers were exchanged for the Birkenstock sandals European men insist on wearing over dark socks. A mirror splattered with hairspray and streaked with substances best not inquired into gave him back the reflection of a man dressed in Euro-fashion, the combination of the worst a common market had to offer.

The unfavorable exchange of dollars for euros at the airport posed a financial hit. Still, he was willing to pay for the opportunity to see if anyone he recognized lingered while a machine completed what amounted to small scale extortion.

Another series of people-moving devices deposited him into the train station, the one place unchanged since his last visit. A pavilion like roof sheltered four tracks and a small arcade. He bought espresso from an old woman and a ticket from another machine. Then he sat, waiting for both the caffeine high and the train into Rome. Predictably, the coffee did its work before the Italian Railway. The train was as refreshingly new as the airport. Comfortable seats upholstered in tasteful blue fabric had replaced dirty and cracked vinyl. Instead of small, dusty windows and cramped aisles, the cars boasted panoramic views on either side of a generous aisle.

The ride was unchanged. Lang inevitably expected a countryside dotted with ruins of temples and crumbling arches, alabaster badges of glories past. After all, this was Rome, the Eternal City. All he ever saw from train windows were weed-infested switching yards, rusting rolling stock and the backs of drab housing projects. The same disappointing intrusion of the twenty-first century every time.

When he had brought Dawn here, she had found even the blight exciting. She had almost exploded with anticipation at each dreary stop, thrilled by the very names along the route.

Dawn.

She had enjoyed every second of life, delighted in the smallest detail. He saw her not in the modern coach but the old one, relishing the filthy vinyl of the seat, alternately staring at the Italians on board and craning her neck to make sure she missed nothing of the industrialized suburbs of Rome. For the forty-five minutes the trip took, her fascination with a foreign country's banalities never subsided.

Later, she admitted she found even the smells of the crowded coach exotic. Anyone thrilled by the aroma of fifty or so unwashed bodies reeking of garlic and hair tonic truly loved life.

Dawn.

He and Dawn stayed at a tiny hotel that had shared a piazza with the Pantheon for half a millennium. Then, the city had been romantic, fascinating, full of treasures at every turn. Now all he saw were the crowds and grime of one more big town, a place full of painful memories.

The train was creaking to a stop for Tiburtina, the end of the line, as he managed to set memories of Dawn aside as gently as he might handle fine porcelain. Where to stay? He rationalized that the place Dawn and he had enjoyed so much was too touristy, too likely to be found were someone searching for him. The big hotels, the Hassler and Eden, were even more obvious, places that catered to Americans. A number of smaller establishments were clustered along the remnants of the northern wall, hotels that offered modest prices and a view of the Borghese Gardens over the crumbling bricks of Rome's ancient perimeter. No good: haunts for Americans on package tours and budgets, students, academics and retirees. Worse, these hostels were within blocks of the embassy, their prices and location ideal for use by old acquaintances. He preferred not to encounter former comrades by accident. Too many questions to answer.

Assuming the people he sought weren't Italian, he needed a place where a foreigner would be rare, easy for him to spot as he tried to blend into the fabric of the city. There were a number of small, pricey inns along the Via del Corso, places where Armani salesmen from Milan and glass manufacturers' reps from Venice would stay to service the stores along one of Europe's most chic shopping districts. A possibility.

As the train shuddered to a final stop, he decided upon none of the above. Instead, he chose the Trastavere district. Lang remembered it from pre-Dawn days. Like some other urban areas separated from the main city by a river, the Trastavere considered itself different, more Roman than Rome, just as Brooklynites prided themselves on being the real New Yorkers or the residents of the Rive Gauche the true Parisians.

He had originally found the area's charm in its history. In the sixteenth century, it had been Rome's blue-collar neighborhood, home to the artisans who built the cathedrals, painted its frescoes and carved its monuments. Michelangelo and Leonardo had both stayed in the Trastavere. In modern times it had become a haven for the bohemian lifestyle, the residence of unemployed musicians and artists looking for patrons.

There was a trattoria on the Piazza Masti where he had shared pasta with a Czech defector. The food had been abysmal, the decor worse, featuring photographs of those two Italian-American icons, Sinatra and Stallone. The piano player had mangled American tunes of the fifties. He never considered taking Dawn there.

Next door had been a pensione, a few rooms in a district that made little accommodation for visitors, certainly none for the luxury demanded by Americans.

Perfect.

He spoke only a little Italian, mostly the tourist vocabulary of directions to the men's room and complaints about prices. And the universal "Prego," a chameleonlike word that could mean anything from "in a hurryn to "you're welcome." Unfortunately, his Latin was of about as much use as Chaucer's English would have been in today's America. Not that it mattered at the moment. The driver of the Opel taxi he took at the station was even more unfamiliar with the native language. Whatever the cabbie's linguistic shortcomings, it quickly became obvious he had acclimated to driving in Rome, using horn and gestures rather than brakes. Intersections without stoplights were tests of testosterone levels.

Since only about a fifth of the streets were wide enough for vehicles larger than the ubiquitous Vespas and bicycles, the ride was circuitous. From experience, Lang found it easier on the nerves to close his eyes, hold on and pray to Mercury, the Roman god of travelers in peril.

The cab lurched suddenly and Lang winced in anticipation of metal grinding against metal. Instead, he heard a stream of Italian invective fading behind them. He opened his eyes. The cab was on a bridge, the Ponte Palatina. The dull green Tiber, lined with trees, sloshed listlessly along in its concrete prison below.

Lang remembered an observation Dawn had made: Unlike Paris, London or even Budapest, Rome did not show its best face along its river. The Tiber was more like the city's backyard, she maintained, a nuisance towards which no major buildings faced, distant from the center of -ancient, medieval and modern Rome. As happened so often, she had verbalized a thought he had never quite completed. One more reason she left a gap in his life that he doubted would ever be filled.

Ahead and to the right, the dome of Saint Peter's floated on a brown sea of smog, coolly serene above the mass confusion of early morning traffic. A right turn and the river was replaced by three-and four-story buildings, their worn stucco roseate in the early sunlight. He recognized the Piazza di Santa Maria di Trastavere by its Romanesque church. The small square was full of grandmothers pushing baby carriages and men unloading trucks. The neighborhood was groggy, stretching and yawning as it recovered from the previous evening. Tonight, dark would again send the older folks and children inside while jazz musicians, mimes, and the young swingers took their places. By night, this piazza was Bourbon Street, the Left Bank, anyplace funky.

The Opel dashed down an alley into which it barely fit and then came to an uncertain stop. Shabby buildings huddled around a small square paved with stones that could have been placed there centuries ago or yesterday. Shadows gave the area an ominous feeling as they stubbornly retreated from the morning.

Lang got out, paid the cabby too much and crossed the square, wondering if he could have chosen a better location. The trattoria he remembered had not yet opened but next to it the pensione was advertising a vacancy. He slammed the huge brass knocker twice against the massive panels of the door. From inside, bolts began to slide, one, two, three before the door groaned open on iron hinges.

Lang had forgotten the locks.

Either the city experienced a perpetual wave of burglaries or its citizens were fascinated with locks. It had not been unusual to have to open two or three to get into his hotel at night, another pair to access the proper floor and two or three more on each room. A guest in one of the smaller hotels, one which did not have a night clerk on duty, was weighted down by more keys than the average jailer.

"Si?"

Lang was looking at an old man, his frame so small Lang was surprised he could open the mammoth door.

"Una camera?" Lang asked. A room?

The old man inspected Lang carefully. Lang knew the look. The innkeeper was trying to guess how much he could charge for the room. Stepping aside, the old man motioned his potential guest inside. "Una camera. Si."

Lang was trying to disguise his American accent. "Con bagno?" With bath?

The old geezer had apparently decided Lang had potential above his average guests: students, the traveling poor. He shook his head, no, the room didn't come with a bath. "But come with me," he gestured.

Lang followed him up a dark staircase and down a hall to an open door. Inside, the furnishings were about what Lang would have expected of a pensione: double bed, its sheets and pillows rolled at the foot; a dresser against the wall, its imitation wood veneer scarred by cigarette burns. Above it hung a mirror in a plastic frame. An armoire, also with a mirror, matched the dresser only in age.

Lang crossed over· to the single window and was delighted to find himself looking down into a courtyard, one of those Roman surprises hidden from the noise and grime of the street. Like many such places, this one had been turned into a compact and fertile vegetable patch, an Italian specialty. Even though it was only April, round red tomatoes peeped out from lush vines. Some eggplants already bore purple fruit. There were greens Lang didn't recognize along with the basil and oregano without which no Italian garden is complete.

The old man spewed out words so fast Lang would have had a hard time understanding him even if he had been fluent in the language. Lang surmised he was describing the amenities of the room.

"Non parlo Italiano," Lang said sadly as though admitting one of his life's greater failures. "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"

Being German would explain the edge Lang had put on what little Italian he had spoken. After years in Bonn, Frankfurt and Munich, Lang's. German was pretty good.

There were a number of other reasons to assume a German identity.

The old man shook his head, reappraising his guest. Lang guessed he might well be old enough to remember the German-Italian Axis, Hitler and Mussolini. The Italians did not find it inconsistent to recall II Duce as a builder of roads, the only man ever to make the trains run on time, while blaming the devastation of their country on Hitler. In fact, the anniversary of the collapse of the Fascista was a holiday every April, called Liberation Day. The national pretense was that the people themselves had had nothing to do with World War II. True or not, the old hotelkeeper was not likely to admit he knew the language of the country's former oppressors.

Neither historic revision of Orwellian proportions nor the more recent Common Market had reduced the awe with which the Italians regarded the German people. Teutonic trains ran to the precise second; their automobiles were reliable and their economy and government stable. Germans were not like Italians.

Even more distinct was the German's lack of interest in the haggling that was part of every Italian purchase. Lang could see the disappointment in the old man's eyes as he stepped into the hall to display what he considered the room's most salable feature: it was adjacent to the guest bath.

With a gesture, Lang declined his host's offer to inspect the facility. Lang had seen enough bagno to anticipate he would stand and use the shower hose rather than sit in a tub that might receive a weekly cleaning.

Lang nodded. He would take the room.

"Quotidano?" Would Lang pay by the day?

"Si."

The innkeeper named a number, disappointed when Lang's lack of reaction indicated he had started too low. He held out his hand for Lang's passport. Like most European countries, Italy required establishments renting rooms by the night to make records of their guests' nationality papers, information entered into a computer by the local police and checked against lists of wanted criminals and other undesirables such as suspected terrorists or couples staying together without benefit of clergy.

"Ho una ragazza," Lang said with a salacious wink. I have a girlfriend. Lang tendered several large bills in excess of the night's rent.

Lang didn't have to be fluent in the language to read the old man's mind as he inspected the cash and leered, communicating his understanding of illicit romance with a wink. This guest, he was thinking, is a German and therefore wealthy. He wants only to spend a night or two with a woman not his wife without the potential inconvenience of that fact being stored in endless government records. The question was not one of morality but of economics. How large would be the bribe to the local police to forget this minor infraction of an onerous law that did nothing but invade personal freedom anyway?

Such questions were frequent in Italian business.

Lang headed for the stairs, pretending to be leaving, before the old man grudgingly agreed to accept what had been offered. He handed Lang a ring of keys along with another incomprehensible string of Italian and left the floor, his muttering trailing up the stairs behind him like malodorous smoke from a cheap cigar.

Lang locked the door and stretched out on the bed. Through the open window, the sharp noises of traffic were smoothed into a sleepy drone. He inhaled the fragrance of freshly turned earth mixed with a bouquet of herbs.

He thought of Janet and Jeff.

In less than a minute, he was asleep.

2

Portugal

0827 hours the same day

Hundreds of miles away, at about the same time Langford's plane touched down, fog swirled against rippled and nearly opaque windowpanes, condensing into tiny rivers of silver that ran along the leaded edge of each piece of ancient glass. The mist, not yet dissipated by a monochromatic sun, made gray stone resemble a grainy black-and-white photograph.

From a window, a light, muted into quicksilver by the moist haze, danced across the otherwise still fog. The light took on a bluish tint as a computer screen flickered alive, an event so starkly anachronistic with the hand-carved stone, battlements and turrets as to be disturbing had anyone been watching.

The man in front of the screen might also have been from another time. He wore a coarse robe with a hood, something from a medieval monastery, perhaps. Despite the chill, his feet were clad only in thong sandals. He waited impatiently for the Macintosh to boot up before typing an eight-letter password. A series of letters, five to a group, appeared. These groups were completely arbitrary to anyone without decryption software. When he was certain the message was complete, the operator touched a series of keys. The indecipherable letter blocks were replaced by a single sentence.

The man wagged his chin up and down as though agreeing with what he was reading. An unauthorized and virtually undetectable entry into worldwide airline reservation systems had revealed that Langford Reilly had flown into Rome from Miami. Similar hacking into credit card records failed to disclose hotel reservations. Presumably his whereabouts would soon be available from police computers into which his passport would have been entered. The information could be picked as easily as grapes from the vine.

The operator scowled. He didn't like to wait; that wasn't what computers were all about.

A breeze parted the fog outside like a curtain and rattled the windows in their hand-forged lead casements like a spirit seeking entry.

The man didn't notice. He reread the message as he unconsciously twisted the silver chain around his neck. From the chain hung a pendant with four triangles. He input instructions to his electronic correspondent: Find Reilly. See who his past contacts in Rome might be. The authorities will shortly be looking for him also. Before you kill him, see what he knows, who he has told.

1

Rome

1300 hours

Lang woke up refreshed, having made up for the sleep he had missed on the plane and the change in time zones. Outside, the hum of traffic was missing. A check of his watch told him why. Thirteen hundred hours, one o'clock, the time in the afternoon when businesses, museums and even churches close for three hours.

Lang swung his feet off the bed and unlocked the door. He stepped into the empty hall and gently rapped on the door of the communal bath. With no response, he ventured in. It was every bit as bad as he had anticipated. After washing his face in the cracked porcelain sink, he did his business before venturing out of the pensione.

Standing in the shadow of the doorway, Lang checked the piazza for anyone who didn't seem to belong. Little boys shouted as they kicked a scruffy soccer ball. Crones in black poked and sniffed the produce in a small vegetable stall. Old men sat at tables in front of the taverna across the way and drank coffee or grappa while watching with watery eyes. Those of the median ages between the very young and the very old were, Lang guessed, having lunch inside before returning to work.

As he crossed the square, he was gratified to note the trattoria next to the pensione, the one with the bad food and worse art, had few customers.

As he walked, he was surrounded by cats. The animal most symbolic of Rome wasn't really the she wolf of legend but an ordinary house tabby. They didn't seem to belong to anyone if, indeed, a cat ever does. But they all looked well fed and healthy. Maybe that's why he didn't see any rats. Small fountains, no more than cement bowls with flowing pipes, were placed on almost every block so that the cats, and the occasional dog, wouldn't go thirsty.

The only thing more numerous than cats were Gypsies, dark-haired women extending roses for sale, reaching for palms to read, or suckling infants. Or muttering curses at passersby uninterested in whatever was being offered. Gypsies, Romans believed, made their real living as pickpockets and thieves. True or not, Lang shifted his wallet to his front pocket.

It was a rare piazza that did not have its own unique church, stature or fountain. Likewise, each of those miniature neighborhoods had its own odor. Brewing cappucino might dominate one, while a block away, an open-air market would scent the air with ripe vegetables.

The smell of fresh bread stopped him cold. He was hungry, hadn't eaten since the soggy, unidentifiable mess the airline had proclaimed a meal. He made a right turn down another alley-width street, dodged a Japanese motorcycle under less than complete control by its driver, and arrived at the Osteria den Berlli, a restaurant on the Piazza San Apollonia. He hoped the Osteria still had the quality seafood he remembered.

An hour later, Lang stepped back into the sunshine, the taste of garlic octopus clinging to his palate. He strolled north, just one more Roman letting lunch settle in his stomach, until he reached the traffic-choked Via Della Concilazone, the wide boulevard that leads to the Vatican. Even in April, before the tourist season started, the sidewalks were jammed. Shops displayed religious trinkets, small busts of the Pope, cheap crucifixes. Lang would not have been surprised to see St. Peter's Basilica in a snow globe.

Before leaving Atlanta, he had made one more call to Miles, this time asking about common acquaintances in Rome.

Miles had been guarded. "You're going to Rome for a vacation and just want to renew auld lang syne, right? This doesn't have anything to do with the thermite or your sister's death, right?"

"You're overly suspicious, Miles."

"Comes with the job, remember? Besides, I'd get shit-canned, I told who the Agency people in Rome were. Maybe shot."

"They don't do that anymore," Lang had said. "Just cancel your government pension and benefits."

"Years I put in, that's worse."

"Besides," Lang said reasonably, "I didn't ask who was Agency in Rome, I asked whom we knew in Rome."

"Typical lawyer hairsplitting. Why you wanna know, anyway?" "I need an introduction at the Vatican, figured the Agency'd know whom to contact."

Miles made no effort to even sound as if he believed him. "Vatican, like where the Pope hangs? You want to fill out the forms for future canonization, right?"

"Miles, Miles, you are letting cynicism poison your otherwise bright and cheerful disposition. I simply want a brief conference with one of the Holy Father's art historians"

The phone connection did nothing to diminish the snort of derision. "Right. Like I would engage only in intellectual conversation were I alone on a desert island with Sharon Stone."

Lang sighed theatrically. "Miles, I'm serious. I have a client who is about to spend a fortune on a work of religious art. The world's most renowned expert on the artist is in the Vatican. Would I lie to you?"

"Like I would if my wife found lipstick on my fly. Okay, okay, I can't give you a roster of Rome assets, don't have the clearance to call it up, anyway. Just so happens, though, that I heard Gurt Fuchs is presently assigned to the trade attaché at the Rome embassy."

Lang couldn't remember if he had taken the time to thank Miles before hanging up the phone. There had been a time when Gurtude Fuchs had made him forget everything else.

Lang's first career had been with the Agency, the job he referred to in his mind as being an office-bound James Bond. Like most embryonic spies, he had trained at Camp Perry near Williamsburg, Virginia. Known as the Farm by its graduates, there he had learned the arcane arts of code, surveillance and the use of weapons ranging from firearms and knives to garrote and poison. His performance had been either too good or too poor (depending on the point of view) for a posting to the Fourth Directorate, Ops. Instead, he had been sent to a dreary office across the street from the Frankfurt railway station where he spent his days with the Third Directorate, Intelligence. Rather than cloak and dagger, his tools had consisted of computers, satellite photos, Central European newspapers and equally humdrum equipage.

In 1989, Lang had seen his future in the Agency shrunk by the much-heralded Peace Dividend and changed by shifting priorities. Even the grime-encrusted office with a view of the Bahnhofin Frankfurt would be a source of nostalgia when he was forced to learn Arabic or Farsi and stationed in some place where a hundred-degree day seemed balmy. Dawn, his new bride, had drawn the line at including a floor-length burka in her trousseau.

He had taken his retirement benefits and retreated to law school.

Gurt, an East German refugee, had been a valued linguist, analyst and expert on the German Democratic Republic, who was also stuck in the Agency's Third Directorate.

Gurt and Lang had joined several couples for a ski weekend in Garmish-Partenkirchen. In his mind, Gurt would always be associated with the Post Hotel, Bavarian food, and the slopes of the Zugspitze. The resulting affair had been hot enough to burn out a few months later when he met Dawn on a brief trip back to the States.

To Lang's surprise and chagrin, Gurt had seemed more relieved than jilted. They had shared a friendship ever since, though, a relationship renewed as scheduling and posting allowed: an occasional drink in Frankfurt, a dinner in Lisbon until his resignation. By that time she was due a promotion to management, a result of the Agency's begrudging and Congressionally mandated sexual egalitarianism more than her acknowledged abilities. Her talents were not limited to language but ranged from cryptography on the computer to marksmanship on the firing range.

On mature reflection, perhaps it was just as well Gurt did not take the end of their romance too seriously.

When Saint Peter's was only a couple of blocks away, Michelangelo's dome filling the northern horizon, Lang looked for a pay phone. He was thankful he wasn't in one of those European countries where public phones are hoarded like treasures, available only in branches of the national postal system. In Rome, pay phones were plentiful if functioning ones were not. He had chosen this part of the city from which to phone. A trace of any call made from here would lead to one of the most heavily visited places in the world. Though not impossible, it would be difficult to pinpoint the specific location of anyone phone quickly enough to catch someone involved in a conversation of only a couple of minutes.

If anyone were tracing the call.

He dialed the embassy number and listened to the creaks, groans and buzzing of the system.

When a voice answered in Italian, Lang asked for Ms. Fuchs in the trade section.

The voice smoothly transitioned to English. "May I tell her who is calling?"

"Tell her Lang Reilly's in town and would like to buy her dinner."

"Lang!" Gurt shouted moments later. If she wasn't happy to hear from him, she had added acting to her list of achievements. "What carries you to Rome?"

Gurt still had not totally mastered the English idiom.

"What brought me here was seeing you again."

She gave a giggle almost girlish in tone. "Still the Shiest…, er, thrower of bullshit, Lang." He could imagine her cocking an eyebrow. "And have you brought your wife with you to see me?"

No way to explain without staying on the line a lot longer than he intended. "Not married anymore. You free for dinner?"

"For you, if not free, at least inexpensive."

She had mastered lines that died with vaudeville.

They had no common history in Rome, no place he could designate by reference in case someone was monitoring the perpetual tap on all Agency lines. Lang's choices were a secluded place where he could be sure neither had been followed or a very crowded spot where they would be more difficult to spot. The more potential witnesses would also mean more safety.

Crowds won.

"The Piazza Navona, you know it?"

"Of course. It is one of the most famous…"

"Fountain of the Three Rivers. Say about eighteen hundred hours?"

"Isn't that a bit early for dinner?"

Most Italians don't even think about the evening meal until nine o'clock, 2100 on the twenty-four-hour clock common in Europe. They do, however, begin to consume aperitifs long before.

"Want to see you in the sunlight, Gurt. You always looked best in the light."

He hung up before she could reply.

Like most lawyers, Lang was connected to the womb of his office by the umbilical cord of the telephone. He could have no more failed to call in than a fetus could fail to take sustenance. He had not had the time to purchase an international calling card, so the call was going to require considerable patience in dealing with an overseas operator whose English might be marginal.

Sara answered on the second ring. "Mr. Reilly's office."

Lang glanced at his watch and subtracted five hours. It was shortly after nine A.M. in Atlanta.

"Me, Sara. Anything I need to know, any problems?"

"Lang?" Her voice was brittle with tension. "Mr. Chen called."

Chen? Lang didn't have any client… Wait. He had had a client, Lo Chen, several years ago. The man had been accused of involvement with the growing number of Asian mobs in the Atlanta area. Not believing any authority would be stupid enough not to tap the line of the lawyer representing a man accused of a crime, Chen had insisted Lang use pay phones to call him at a rotating list of phone booths. Complying with his client's wishes, Lang used one of the phones in the lobby of the building.

What did Sara mean?

"Do you remember Mr. Chen's number?" Sara sounded as though she was about to cry.

"I'm not sure…"

Sara said something, words directed away from the phone. A man's voice asked, "Mr. Reilly?"

"Who the hell are you?" Lang demanded, angry that someone would interrupt a call to his own office. There was a mirthless chuckle. "Surprised you didn't recognize me, Mr. Reilly." Lang felt his lunch sink. There had to be something wrong, terribly wrong. "Morse?"

"The same, Mr. Reilly. Now, where be you?"

"What the hell are you doing in my office?"

"Trying to find you, Mr. Reilly."

"You got more questions, I'll answer ' em when I get home. Or on your dime."

"And just when might you be coming home?" There was something in the tone, a come-here-little-fish-all-I-want-to-do-is-gut-you quality to the question that activated Lang's paranoia like a tripped burglar alarm.

"You're asking so you can meet my plane with a brass band, right?"

There was a pause, one of those moments the writers of bodice-rippers described as pregnant. Lang would have called this one plain ominous.

Then Sara apparently took the phone back. "They're here to arrest you, Lang!"

"Arrest? Lemme talk to Morse."

When the detective was back on the line, Lang's concern was beginning to outweigh anger. "What is this B.S.? You sure as hell can't begin to prove I've obstructed your investigation."

In fact, with the Fulton County prosecutor's conviction rate, it was doubtful he could convince a jury of Hannibal Lecter's violation of the Pure Food and Drug Act.

There was another dry chuckle, the sound of wind through dead leaves. "Proovin' not be my job, Mr. Reilly. Arrestin'is. Shouldn't come as any big surprise I got a murder warrant here with your name on it. Where were you 'round noon yesterday?"

On my way to Dallas with a false passport as!D, Lang thought sourly. There would be no record that Lang Reilly had been on that plane.

"Murder?" Lang asked. "Of who, er, whom?"

Even stress doesn't excuse poor grammar.

"Richard Halvorson."

"Who is he?"

"Was. He was the doorman at that fancy highrise of yours."

Lang had never asked Richard's last name. 'That's absurd! Why would I kill the doorman?"

"Not for me to say. Mebbe he didn't get your car fast enough."

Just what the world needed: another Lennie Briscoe.

"And I didn't hear you say where you were yesterday," Morse added.

"I barely knew him," Lang protested.

"Musta known him fairly well: left your dog with him. And he was shot with a large-caliber automatic just like the Browning be in your bedside table."

Lang fought the urge to simply drop the phone and run.

The more he knew, the better he could refute what appeared to be absurd charges. "If you've been into my bedside table, I assume you had a warrant."

"Uh-huh. Nice and legal. Got it when your fingerprints showed up on the shell casings. Gun's been fired recently but ballistics report won't be back till tomorrow. I'm bettin' be your gun killed him." Morse was enjoying this. "You got somethin' to say, you come back here an' say it. FBI gets involved, you become a fugitive. You don't want them on your trail."

Me and Richard Kimble, Lang thought.

Lang knew he should sever the connection as quickly as possible but he couldn't, not just yet. "The dog I left with. Richard…?"

Apparently Sara could hear at least part of the conversation. Her voice was clear in the background. "I've got him, Lang, don't you…"

Lang hung up with at least one problem solved and walked away in a daze. They had done it, of course, killed Richard with his Browning – the one Lang had loaded, leaving his prints on the shells – and replacing it where it was sure to be found. Clever. Now every cop connected to the Internet anywhere in the world would be looking for him. Interpol, the Italian Policia, everyone would be doing their work for them.

How long had Lang been on the phone? Long enough for a trace? Unlike the old movies, computers could race through area switchboards with the speed of light. But an international call involved satellites, no wires connected to specific telephones. The best the computer could do was give general coordinates as to location. The bad news was that a trace would reveal Lang wasn't in the U.S. of A., something Morse would have had to wait to find out after getting the record of the Miami-Rome flight in the check of credit cards that was standard procedure in any fugitive hunt. Without a current bogus passport, Lang had had to use his real name and plastic for that leg. In today's terror conscious environment, paying cash for an international flight would have subjected him to scrutiny he had not wanted.

2

Atlanta

Twenty minutes later

Detective Franklin Morse stared at the fax again, although he had already studied every detail of both pages. The quality was poor, but good enough to recognize a copy of an airline ticket from Miami to Rome. The name of the passenger was clear enough: Langford Reilly. So was the transmitted photograph, grainy and streaked.

Reilly looked like he was walking past some sort of official on the other side of a booth, maybe customs or immigration in an airport. That would make sense if Reilly had fled to Rome, if that was where Reilly was when the detective had spoken to him not half an hour before.

What didn't make sense were the two pieces of paper themselves. They had arrived on the machine used exclusively by the detectives in the squad room in Atlanta's City Hall on East Ponce de Leon. Not a state secret but not exactly a published number, either. Verification of the numbers at the top of the pages led to a public facsimile machine in Rome.

Okay, so Lang Reilly was in Rome and someone wanted Morse to know that. But who and why?

A criminal warrant was a matter of public record, but not a lot of citizens scoured the court dockets. Morse had hoped to keep it quiet, not spook the lawyer. Until Reilly had fled, that is. Still, whoever had sent this fax didn't get the information from the media that there was a want out on Reilly, not yet, anyway.

That led to the conclusion that the sender had a source inside the department. Morse shot an involuntary glance around the room, gray furniture on gray carpet in gray cubicles in what had been the appliance floor of a Sears & Roebuck. People came and went, phones rang, and computers clicked in a familiar cacophony.

Not exactly high security. Anyone could have mentioned that Langford Reilly was a man the Atlanta police would like very much to speak with up close and personal.

Granting that the word had gotten out, Morse had been on the job too long to accept anonymous tips at face value. People who ratted from some sense of civic duty rarely did so without a desire for recognition. Sometimes the bad guy was given up because someone wanted to get even for some wrong, real or imagined. Most often, information came for a price, either cash or expectation of future favors.

Morse was willing to bet none of those reasons applied here. Your usual snitch didn't travel to Rome. Nor did he send anonymous tips by paying the cost of transatlantic faxes. No siree Bob, there be something else at work here.

But what?

Morse pushed back from the metal government-issue desk. No point in wasting time inspecting the dentures of free horses. For whatever reason, he had information that a suspect in a murder case was in Rome, had fled the country. Standard procedure was to notify the FBI who would then send a want to the country involved. Assuming the foreign country wasn't involved in a major war, the crime in question had no political ramifications, and the local dicks had nothing more pressing on their collective plates, the police would add the name of the wanted person to a list of criminals, known illegal aliens and other miscreants.

Once and a while, a perp actually blundered into the arms of the Poletzei, gendarmes, constabulary or whatever and got taken back, to the United States. Usually the perp got busted for another crime or was spotted in an airport or train station.

Morse was less than optimistic as he went across the room to wire the Fibbies. Reilly didn't look like a one-man crime wave. But he could have killed Halvorson because the doorman knew he had had a reason to throw that guy off his balcony. Whatever. Except for the real fruitcakes, the odds of a perp killing more than once were nil.

The detective was still thinking when he returned to his cluttered desk. Back to the question of why the anonymous informant had gone to the trouble of letting the cops in Atlanta know that Reilly was in Rome. Only reason Morse could see was that somebody wanted Reilly caught.

The interesting question was why. Answer that and you might get all sorts of helpful information.

Morse leaned back in his chair and regarded the patterns years of water stains had made on the ceiling. But where to start? Man was a lawyer, probably had more than a few people like to see him in jail. Could check the court records, see if Reilly'd lost a case or two he shouldn't have.

Nah, didn't seem right. Something told him to try Reilly's service records, one of those unexplainable, irrational hunches he had learned to trust.

Navy SEAL, the man had said. Small, elite corps. Couldn't be too many of those around. Let's see who Mr. Langford Reilly, Attorney at Law, might have pissed off in the service of his country. Morse looked around the room again, this time trying to remember who had the phone number for the military service records place in St. Louis.

3

Rome

1750 hours

Lang got to the Piazza Navona early, giving himself plenty of time to spot a trap if one was being set. To Lang, the Navona was the most beautiful and historic piazza in a city crammed full of beauty and history. The long elliptical shape recalled the stadium of Diocletian, which the present piazza had replaced. Ancient architecture existed harmoniously with Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque. Of Bernini's three marble fountains on the piazza, the largest was the Three Rivers in the center. It was also the easiest to locate among the mobs of tourists, artists entertainers, and natives who watched the whole scene with detached amusement.

Lang chose a table outside a taverna and picked up an abandoned newspaper, over the top of which he could watch the shifting crowd of tourists taking pictures, artists selling paintings and entertainers seeking tips from an appreciative audience. He hoped he looked like one more Italian, whiling away an afternoon over a cup of espresso.

Gurt was hard to miss. She turned more heads than the American Chiropractic Association. She stood nearly six feet, pale honey hair caressing shoulders bared by a well filled tube top. She approached with long regal steps, designer sunglasses reflecting the sinking sun as her head turned back and forth, searching the piazza.

As she came closer, Lang was glad to see that ten-plus years had not changed the long face, angular chin and high cheekbones. She carried an aura of untouchability that made men keep their distance. Perhaps it was a dose of the arrogance for which her countrymen are noted.

Or a desire to invade France.

Either way, Lang could see her on German travel posters.

There had been a time when his fantasies had placed her in less public places.

She lowered her glasses long enough for her blue eyes to lock onto his before she resumed what appeared to be an idle glance around the piazza. She was waiting for him to make the first move, to let her know if it was safe to acknowledge each other.

Lang vaulted out of his seat and walked over to her, unable to keep a stupid grin off his face. Without having to lean over, he kissed her cheek.

"You look great, Gurt."

She returned his kiss with somewhat less enthusiasm. "So I am told."

He took her left hand, surprised at how gratified he was not to find a ring on it, and led her back to where his coffee cup and purloined newspaper waited. He reclaimed the table with a sudden sideways move that would have done credit to an NFL running back, earning glares from an American couple who had not yet learned that in securing taxis and taverna seats, quickness and daring are everything. Gurt sat with the ease of royalty assuming a throne, dug into an oversized handbag, and placed a pack of Marlboros on the table.

"I'm surprised you still smoke," Lang said.

She tapped a cigarette from the pack and lit it with a match. "How could I not? I am brain-laundered from all the ads your tobacco companies run here because they cannot show them in the States."

Not exactly true. A number of European countries had banned tobacco ads.

"Not good for your health, Gurt."

She let a stream of smoke drift from her nostrils and once again he was reminded of the golden years of cinema. And lung cancer.

"Smoking is not as unhealthy as the business you were in when I last saw you."

"Third Directorate, Intelligence?" Lang asked. "Biggest risk was getting poisoned by the food in the cafeteria."

"Or dropping a girl like a hot… cabbage?"

"Potato."

"Potato." Those blue eyes were boring into his so hard that Lang looked away.. "I wish I could say I regretted it. I fell in serious love with Dawn."

"And with me?"

"Just-as-serious lust."

She took another puff and waited for the server to take their order before taking a new line. "If the people back at the embassy knew I was meeting with a former, er, employee who, I am sure, wants something, I'd go Tolstoy."

Go Tolstoy, being required to fill reams of paper with details of anything that didn't fit routine, usually filled with self-serving fiction.

The waiter reappeared with two glasses of Brunello. The dying sun reflected from the red wine to paint spots of blood on the tabletop while they watched people watching people. Rome's favorite pastime. A battalion of Japanese followed their tour leader, a woman holding up a furled red umbrella like a battle flag. They broke ranks to photograph the magnificent Bernini marbles.

When her glass was half empty, Gurt spoke with a nonchalance so intensely casual Lang knew she had been straining not to ask before now. "You are divorced?"

"Not exactly."

He explained about Dawn, only partially successful in trying to relate her death in an emotionless narrative. Sometimes being a man isn't easy. Gurt picked upon the still-sharp grief, her eyes shimmering. The Germans are a sentimental lot. SS guards who had joked while exterminating women and children in the morning wept at Wagner's operas the same evening.

"I'm sorry, Lang," she said, her voice husky with sympathy. "I truly am."

She put a hand over his.

He made no effort to move it. "You never married?"

She gave a disdainful snort. "Marry who? You don't meet the best people in this job. Only lunatics."

"Could be worse," Lang quipped. "What if you were working for the penal system?"

She brightened. "There is such a thing?"

"Corrections, Gurt, the U.S. prison system."

"Oh." She sighed her disappointment. "Well, my not getting married is not why you are here. I think you want something."

He told her about Janet and Jeff and the man who had broken into his condo.

"Who are these people that would kill your sister and your nephew?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out."

They were quiet while the waiter refilled glasses.

When he departed, Lang took the copy of the Polaroid from a pocket and pushed it across the table. "If someone could tell me what the significance of this picture is, I might be on the way to finding the people responsible."

She stared at the picture as though she were deciphering a code. "The police in the States, they cannot help?"

He retrieved the picture. "I don't think so. Besides, this is personal."

"You were with the Agency long enough to learn revenge is likely to get you killed."

"Never said anything about revenge, just want to identify these people. The cops can take it from there." "Uh-huh," she said, not believing a word of it. "And how do you think I can help?"

"I need an introduction to a Guiedo Marcenni – a monk, I think. Anyway, he's in the Vatican Museum. Who does the Agency know in the Vatican these days?"

Lang remembered the well-kept secret that the Vatican had its own intelligence service. The Curia, the body charged with following the Pope's directives in the actual governance of the Church, maintained a cadre of information gatherers whose main functionaries were missionaries, parish priests or any other face the Church showed the public. Even though the service had not carried out a known assassination or violent (as opposed to political) sabotage since the Middle Ages, the very number of the world's Roman Catholics, their loyalty and, most importantly, the sacrament of confession, garnered information unavailable to the spies of many nations. Like similar organizations, the Agency frequently swapped tidbits with the Holy See.

Gurt fished another cigarette from the pack. "And what am I to tell my superiors? Why do I want to introduce a former agent to this monk?"

Lang watched her light up and inhale. "Simply a favor for an old friend, a friend who has specific questions about a piece of art he wishes to ask on behalf of a client."

"I will think about it."

They ordered bean soup and eggplant sautéed in olive oil along with a full bottle of wine.

As they finished, Lang said, "Gurt, there's something else you ought to know."

She glanced up from the small mirror she was using to repair her lipstick. "That you are wanted by the American police? Close your mouth, it is most unattractive hanging open. I saw the bulletin this afternoon."

One of the duties the Agency had assumed rather than face extinction upon the demise of its original enemy was cooperation with local authorities and Interpol in locating American fugitives abroad. The FBI, sensing a turf invasion, had protested loudly but futilely.

Lang felt his dinner lurch in his stomach. "You mean the Agency knows?"

She checked the result of her effort, turning her head to maximize the light supplied by tabletop candles. "I doubt it. The message was misfiled. The screw up won't be discovered for a day or two."

"But why…?"

She dropped the mirror back into her bag. "I have known you a long time, Lang Reilly. A call from you after all those years made me alert. I did not think you would have called me unless you wanted something. Then I read the incoming and made a connection. I hunched right."

Her mangling of the idiom did nothing to diminish his surprise."But you could get fired…"

She stood and stretched, a motion he guessed she knew emphasized shapely breasts. "You are an old friend, one of the Komraden. I have few of those."

He looked up at her, feeling a smile beginning. "Even when I'm an international fugitive?"

"Why not? I was willing to help when you called and I knew you were a lawyer."

Everybody was into lawyer-bashing.

Lang left several bills on the table as he stood up. "A walk before I put you into a cab?'

She stepped closer. He could smell the sourness of tobacco smoke as she spoke. "Have I gotten so old I no longer interest you?"

Coquettishness had never been among Gurt's charms.

"If looks are what you mean, you've aged better than good whisky. I'd hardly call what I feel 'interest'"

"Good," she said. "Then we can take the same cab to wherever you're staying."

Being a Southerner, Lang was a little uncomfortable when he realized he was the one being seduced. Scarlett O'Hara was a steel magnolia, not a New Woman.

He took her hand. "This way, Fraulein. And by the way, the charge is murder. I'm innocent."

She slipped her bag over her shoulder. "I knew that before I came here."

Later that night, Lang lay on top of skimpy covers, sweat drying on his chest. Beside him, Gurt's breathing was deep and regular, the sound of peaceful sleep. They had made love without inhibition, a noisy performance he was fairly certain dismissed any doubts his host might have had about the reason he had not wanted his passport entered into the system.

The murder charge, he thought, could be disproved easily enough. Show Morse the bogus passport and let him check the airline's passenger manifest. The Agency would be less than happy to find a former employee was using false papers it had created, but the Agency wasn't his problem. Lang's problem was that he would have to return to Atlanta to demonstrate his alibi. That, he wasn't ready to do. Not yet, anyway.

4

Rome 1230 hours the next day

"Your Brother Marcenni isn't at the Vatican."

Lang put down his square of pizza, swallowed and asked, "Then, where is he?" Gurt had gone to work that morning and then met him at an outdoor table on the Via del Babulno in view of the Spanish Steps, a hundred yards by a hundred yards of white travertine angles, straights and terraces in their spring garb of pink azaleas. As always, the steps were the roost of hordes of young people: students and artists, who seemed to spend their days sitting, smoking, photographing each other and lazing in the sun.

Gurt, obviously enjoying Lang's concern, was prolonging it. She poked a fork tentatively at her salad. "Orvieto, he's in Orvieto, supervising the restoration of some frescoes."

Lang took a sip of beer. Orvieto was an hour, hour and a half north of Rome just off the Auto Strada to Florence. He put down his glass. "Want to spend a day in Umbria, just being a tourist?"

Finished with her salad, Gurt was firing up another Marlboro, the second Lang had seen since she had joined him that morning. "Why not? But do not think I believe this tourist shit. You cannot communicate with this priest unless he speaks English or I translate for you."

Once again, Gurt had read him with disquieting accuracy. Among several other languages, she was fluent in Italian. At the Vatican, finding a translator would have been no problem. In a small hill town, it might be impossible.

"Is that a 'yes'?"

She nodded, looked vainly for an ash tray and flicked ashes onto her empty plate where they sizzled in the salad's oil. "It is."

"We'd best go by car. The international fugitive bulletin you saw probably's been disseminated to the local cops and I'd just as soon stay away from choke points."

Choke points, places where he could be squeezed into narrow quarters. Like train or bus stations. Or airports.

She tilted her chin and jetted smoke skyward. "I would think a motorcycle would be more desirable. The helmet is a perfect mask and nobody would expect you to be on a bike."

Lang grinned. "I wouldn't expect me to be, either. Have you looked at" those things lately? Cafe racer bars, competition-faring, rear-mounted pegs. You have to ride the damn things like you're making love to them. Besides, riding anything on the Auto Strada without being encased in iron is suicidal."

"There was a time when you had motorcycles happy, liked them. You even owned one, a Triumph Bonneville. Called it the crotch rocket."

"That was over ten years ago," Lang said. "I've gotten smarter in my old age."

She ground out her cigarette in the plate. "Or duller."

"You didn't think I was dull last night."

"I was being polite." A shadow on the table made them look up. The waiter was following the conversation with obvious interest.

"Lovers' quarrel," Lang explained.

"We are not in love," Gurt said.

"You adore me."

"In your dreams."

The waiter fled. Gurt and Lang burst into laughter at the same time.

When he could be serious again, Lang said, "Too bad radio comedy is dead. Did you mean what you said?"

"About not being in love?"

"About the motorcycle."

"It would be a good disguise. Nobody would suspect a man your age would be on a bike."

Lang suspected he had just been insulted. "That mean you're willing to ride on the back all the way to Orvieto?" "The fresh air will do us both healthy."

"You're on. But can we find a machine we can sit on instead of hunch over?"

1

Rome

The next morning

Lang didn't expect a fine Italian bike, a Ducatti or Moto Guzi. They were far too expensive for the average Italian and most were exported to the States. He anticipated one of the small Japanese machines common to Rome's narrow streets.

He was mistaken.

She arrived the next morning on a BMW 1000, old but well kept. The machine wasn't known for its acceleration, but it excelled in reliability, smoothness of ride and lack of noise. BMW had been the first to employ the shaft drive now used by most touring bikes in place of the vibration causing, maintenance-high chain.

Had it not been for the braid of blond hair hanging down the back of the green-and-white leathers, Gurt's full face helmet would have made recognizing her impossible. Lang watched with equal parts amusement and surprise as Gurt dismounted. She was the only woman he had ever known strong enough to hoist a bike that big onto its floor stand. Matter of fact, he don't think he'd ever known another woman who drove a motorcycle.

He was appraising the BMW as she pulled off her Bell Magnum.

"Nice, yes?" she said.

"Makes the trip worth taking. Don't suppose you have an extra set of leathers?"

Europeans biking the highways wore colorful two-piece leather outfits rather than the jeans preferred by Americans. Without the proper costume, Lang would be conspicuous.

She pointed. "In the Krausers."

Krausers were the saddlebags attached to the frame. With the turn of a key, they could be detached to serve as luggage.

"And an extra helmet." One identical to hers was hanging on its loop beneath the seat.

"I don't know what you had to do to get someone to loan you their bike plus all this," Lang said, taking the leathers out of the saddlebag, "and I'm sure not going to ask."

Gurt laughed. "Why would I borrow it? It's mine."

Lang felt a twinge of jealousy that he was pulling on pants an unknown number of other guys had worn. "I suppose you'll insist on driving, then."

"And make you sit behind a woman?" She found this immensely funny. "You would be, what's the word, castigated?"

"Castrated."

"That, too."

Lang was surprised at how well the trousers fit. The jacket was snug but it would zip shut. His reflection in a shop window showed a typical European, ready for a cross-country ride. Except for the Birkenstocks.

"Damn! Forgot my shoes."

Gurt smiled. "I have no extra boots."

"I've got a pair of shoes back at the pensione. They aren't motorcycle boots but they're better'n sandals."

The slow run through the narrow streets and alleys served as a refresher course in motorcycle driving. By the time they reached the pensione, Lang was eager to get on the road where speed would make the BMW far more stable than the wobbling pace the crowded city streets required.

He was in and out of-the room in seconds while Gurt straddled the bike, studying a road map. Lang's Cole Haans hadn't been intended for shifting a motorcycle's gears but they would do. He turned to the east towards the Tiber and let out the hand clutch as he turned the throttle.

2

The old pensione-keeper had been watching from behind a curtained window. How strange these Germans were! The man would only pay for a room at this modest establishment to fuck his whore, yet he was riding a BMW worth two or three months' salary for the average Italian. Where had he been keeping that expensive machine? He certainly had not arrived on it. Clearly the man and woman were used to riding together. They had matching leathers, something the German's wife might like to know and be willing to pay to learn.

He would have to discover the man's identity. Perhaps there were papers in the room… But he would have to be careful. There was something about the occupant of the room next to the bath upstairs, a mannerism, the hardness of his eyes, that said he was a man not to be angered. A knock at the door, the flurry of banging of someone in a hurry. Let them wait. With all three rooms full, there was no reason to risk falling in a rush to turn someone away. The noise became more persistent as the old man shuffled to the door.

The man standing outside wore coveralls, the uniform of the European working class. He could have been a plumber or truck driver. It was unlikely he wanted a room.

"Si?"

The workman shoved his way inside and shut the door before he held up a photograph. The old man recognized the German.

"You have seen this man, an American?" the stranger asked. The accent was not Roman, perhaps not even Italian.

"I am the information bureau?" the old man sneered. Like any other commodity, information had a value, was not something to be given away. Perhaps this man was working for the German's wife. "Out, go ask your questions elsewhere or show me your police credentials."

The stranger reached into the top of his coveralls. When his hand came out, it held a pistol. The gun was pointed at the old man's head.

"Here are all the credentials I need, you old fart. Now, once again before your meager brains are splattered all over this entryway, have you seen this American?"

The old man was frightened. He had seen such things happen on the American programs on television. And this man might be American. Worse, by the way he butchered the language, he could be Sicilian. Either way, dying on behalf of a guest's privacy was not included in the rent. If only this man would go away and leave him unharmed, he would say a hundred Hail Mary's at Saint Peter's.

He nodded and pointed to the picture of his guest. "I thought he was German."

The truck driver, or plumber, or whoever he was, with the gun said angrily, "I don't give a shit what you thought. Is he here?"

The old man felt his bladder release. Warm urine was running down his leg, becoming cold as it soaked his pants. He hoped the man with the gun didn't notice. He would go to Saint Peter's on his arthritic knees if this evil man would just go away.

"He left seconds ago, right before you came. He and a woman." The old man felt weak with relief as he saw the gun returned to inside the coveralls.

"The couple on the motorcycle?"

The pensione owner nodded vigorously. "Yes, yes. That was them. They were headed towards Florence." The stranger was suspicious."And how do you know that?" Had he not been frozen with fear, the old man would have kicked himself for saying anything that kept this intruder here one second longer. If he would go away, he would crawl on his belly like a snake to Saint Peter's.

"I saw the color of the border of the road map the woman was looking at. It only shows Rome north to Florence." The gunman/workman's eyes narrowed. "You have good eyesight for an old man."

He had said too much, the old man was sure of it. He was going to be found dead in the pensione that represented his entire life's savings. He would not only crawl to Saint Peter's, he would take every bit of money paid by the accursed German/American and put it in the poor box as thanks for his deliverance.

The man with the gun spun on the heels of his work boots and left the old man gaping after him. He had been spared. A good thing, too. Had the bastard with the gun remained one second longer, the old innkeeper would have had to attack, snatch away the gun and shoot him with it like the American policeman he had seen in the film on television. What was it the American policeman had said? Oh yes: "Go ahead, make my day."

3

Umbria

Two hours later

Off the Auto Strada, they passed a cluster of motels that would have been at home anywhere along an American interstate. They followed a procession of trucks through modern Orvieto before turning off the main road and beginning the climb uphill.

Orvieto was the only hill town Lang had ever visited that was not hilly. Instead, the old walled city perched on top of a rock formation that was flat on top, a geological phenomenon any resident of the American Southwest would recognize as a mesa. There was little traffic. Tourists had not yet discovered the place, although the huge empty parking lot below the main piazza gave an indication of the citizens' aspirations.

Winding through the narrow streets, Lang guided the BMW into the Via Maurizo and the Piazza Dumo, a square dominated by the cathedral. The late morning sun danced along the gilt mosaics covering the facade of the exuberantly Italian Gothic building. Unlike the more famous towns of Tuscany to the north, there were few cars on the square. Lang parked and held the bike steady as Gurt swung a long leg over the seat to dismount.

They entered the narthex of the church, standing still while their eyes acclimated to the dim light. Inside the nave, candles flickered in side chapels, shadows giving movement to frescoes. A brightness came from somewhere beyond the choir, the raised platform where the transept crossed the main body of the church.

An elaborate altar held more candles, their wavering light making Christ seem to writhe on His cross. To the right of the sanctuary, another side chapel blazed with -electric floodlights anachronistic in a setting centuries old. The floor was covered with dropcloths. Brushes, putty knives and bottles of pigment were scattered everywhere. Even the clutter did little to detract from richly colored figures tumbling into the abyss, that favorite of Italian frescoes, the Final Judgement.

No matter whether painted by Michelangelo, Bernini or some other artist, the subject always reminded Lang of late Friday night at a singles bar.

On scaffolding halfway up the wall of anguished souls consigned to damnation (or those who would sleep alone), three men were examining one of the figures. Two wore overalls. The third was in a paint-splattered cassock.

"Fra Marcenni?" Gurt called.

The man in the cassock turned. He could have been one of the saints pictured throughout the church. His white hair stood around a pink circle of scalp, catching the powerful light in an electronic halo. He was small, about the size of the pensione's owner and about the same age.

"Si?"

"Do you speak English?" she asked, shading her eyes as she looked up at the top of the scaffolding.

The halo shook: no.

Gurt fired off a burst of Italian.

The monk smiled and replied, pointing behind Lang and Gurt.

"He says he'll come down in a minute or two, that he'll be happy to speak to us. We are to enjoy the art of this magnificent church while we wait."

Lang's lack of interest in religious art applied equally to the magnificent or otherwise. So, instead of feeding coins into boxes to illuminate the paintings in the various chapels, he amused himself by deciphering the Latin epitaphs marking the tombs of prelates and nobility who had contributed generously to this church. The burial places of the poor, no doubt, had long since been forgotten.

The meek might someday inherit the earth but it will be one that doesn't remember them.

Lang studied a small glass vial embedded in the altar, trying to ascertain what holy relic might be enshrined there. A nail from the True Cross, a finger bone of St. Paul?

He never found out.

Gurt took him by the arm. "Fra Marcenni is taking a break. We'll have coffee on the square."

The good brother preferred wine.

They sat alfresco at a table only a few yards from the massive doors of the cathedral. Gurt and the monk exchanged what Lang supposed were the banalities of commencing a conversation with a stranger.

Signaling for a second glass, the old monk said something to Gurt and looked at Lang. "He would like to see the picture we have come to ask about," she translated.

Lang handed it across the table. "Tell him I need to know what it shows."

The monk stared at the Polaroid while Gurt spoke. He replied and Lang waited impatiently for the English.

"Three shepherds are looking at a tomb."

Lang had never considered this possibility for the enigmatic structure. "The woman, who is she?" The old man listened to Gurt and crossed himself as he replied.

"A saint, perhaps the Blessed Virgin herself," Gurt said. "She is watching the shepherds at the tomb, perhaps the tomb of Christ before He arises."

Swell. Lang had come all this way to understand another religious painting. Although the tomb of Christ had always been pictured as a cave, one from which a stone could be rolled. The difference was hardly worth the trip.

He was reminded of the two shipwreck survivors floating in a lifeboat in a fog. Suddenly, they see shore and the figure of a man.

"Where are we?" shouts one of the men in the boat.

"At sea, right off the coast," comes the answer.

"Imagine that," the other man in the boat says. "Running into a lawyer out here."

"Lawyer?" his companion asks. "How the hell do you know he's a lawyer?"

"Because the answer to my question was absolutely accurate and totally worthless."

Like the old priest's answer.

Brother Marcenni must have sensed Lang's disappointment. He took a magnifying glass from somewhere in his cassock and squinted at the picture before speaking again to Gurt.

"He says the letters on the tomb are in Latin, written without spaces in the manner of the ancient Romans."

This was again telling Lang he was at sea. "That much I knew."

As though understanding the English, Brother Marcenni read in a slow, quivering voice, "Et in Arcadia ego sum."

"Makes no sense," Lang said to Gurt. "Both sum and ego are first person. Sum means 'I am' and ego is the first person pronoun."

Gurt looked at him as though he had grown another head.

Lang shrugged apologetically. "Latin is sort of a hobby."

"I never knew that."

"It didn't seem relative to the relationship. We usually communicated in grunts and groans. Ask the good brother if sum and ego aren't redundant."

After treating Lang to a glare that would have singed paint, Gurt and the monk exchanged sentences. He gesticulated as though his hands could solve the mystery.

Finally, Gurt nodded and said, "He says the second denotation of the first person is perhaps for emphasis. The phrase would translate as 'I am also' or 'l am even' in Arcadia but is peculiar usage. Perhaps the artist was speaking alle… alle…"

"Allegorically," Lang supplied.

"Allegorically. As if he were saying, 'I am here also: meaning that death is present even in Arcadia."

"The tomb of Christ is in Canada or Greece? Ask him how that might be."

In reply to Gurt's question, the monk motioned the waiter for yet another glass of wine and laughed, hands moving expansively.

"He says the artist, Poussin, was French. The French are too busy with women and wine to be exact about geography. Besides, Arcadia was frequently symbolic for a place of pastoral peace."

Or anything else, by Lang's observation.

Since he had to drive back down that curving road, Lang was drinking coffee. His cup had gone cold and he motioned to the waiter as Brother Marcenni produced a metrically numbered straightedge and began to measure the Polaroid. He turned the picture sideways and upside down, nodded and spoke to Gurt.

"He says this is not only a picture but a map."

Lang forgot about warming up his coffee. "A map? Of what?"

After another exchange and much waving of hands by the monk, Gurt answered, "Many of these old paintings were maps. The shepherds' staffs are held at an angle that forms two legs of an equilateral triangle, see?" She pointed. "If we draw the third leg, the tomb is in the center. That means the painting, the map, directs the observer to the tomb itself, wherever located."

"He's sure?'

Another question in Italian.

The old man nodded vigorously, laying the straightedge along one axis of the picture, then another.

"He's sure. Shepherds' staffs, soldiers' swords, other objects that are straight were often used as clues. It would not be a coincidence that two legs of the triangle would be at geometrically correct angles."

''A tomb's located between the staffs of two shepherds?" Lang was skeptical.

Gurt shook her head. "No, no. Notice the trees lead from the mountains in the background? If you continue the line of those trees, they reach the tomb, too. Trees also frame that jagged gap in the mountains, see? Brother Marcenni says that if you were in this place and lined the mountains up to match the painting, you would be standing where the tomb was."

The monk interrupted.

"He says it is also significant that the background is not as he remembers it, that the Poussin painting with which he is familiar was different. It would not have been unusual in the artist's day to do several similar works."

None of this had convinced Lang. "He's telling us that this painting was done as a map to Christ's burial place in Greece?" '

Gurt again spoke in Italian. The old man shook his head, crossed himself again and pointed to the picture. the sky

and himself.

"He says of course not. The Holy Sepulchre is in Jerusalem and has been empty since the third day after the crucifixion when Christ rose before ascending into heaven. The tomb in the picture could mean anything, a treasure, perhaps where a vision appeared to someone.

When the painting, or the original from which it was copied, was done, symbolism was fashionable, as were hidden meanings, puzzles and secret maps. If you knew where those mountains were, perhaps in Greece, you. might find whatever the tomb symbolizes."

This was a little better than telling Lang he was at sea.

"So," he said, "that's why my sister and nephew died. Someone wanted to make sure they didn't figure out they had seen a map leading to treasure, or something worth killing for."

"Or dying for," Gurt said. "Like the guy who jumped."

They sat in silence for a. moment. Lang was trying to guess what was worth that long step from his balcony. The monk regarded his empty glass wistfully, stood and bowed as he spoke.

"It's time for him to get back to work. Those lazy plasterers will do nothing unless he is there," Gurt translated.

Lang stood. "Tell him he has sincere thanks from this heretic."

Gurt's translation made the old man smile before he turned and crossed the piazza.

Lang sat back down and drained the dregs of his cold coffee. "I'd say somebody has gone to a lot of trouble to make sure nobody lives long enough to figure out that picture."

Gurt gave the square a worried glance. "I'd say you better do as you Americans say, watch your ass." Her face wrinkled. "How do you do that, watch your own ass, without straining your back?"

4

Orvieto

They drove downhill, the narrow mountain road unwinding in front of the BMW like a black ribbon. Even with Gurt's weight on the back, the machine bragged of its stability as Lang braked, downshifted and accelerated through each curve. The combination of precise engineering and a place to test its limits occupied his attention. He had even forgotten Gurt's arms around him, breasts pressed against his back, sensuous even through leather.

There was no guardrail. On the right, Lang could see occasional treetops and roofs of the town far below. His view across the Umbrian valley was virtually unobstructed, a patchwork of shades of green until it reached smoky hills on the horizon. Twice he saw a large bird below, wings outstretched over the farmland as it coasted along thermals. On a motorcycle, he thought, I'm almost that free.

To his left, Orvieto was disappearing behind its walls until there was nothing to see but a bank of dirt or retaining stones.

He was never sure what pulled him from the euphoria of the day, the scenery, the company. He only knew he was surprised on one of the short straight stretches to see the BMW's mirrors filled with a truck. Not the eighteen-wheeled behemoth of American interstates, but large enough to fill its half of the road. Behind the cab, a load on a bed was covered by canvas, its corners flapping in the wind as though the truck, bed and cargo might suddenly take flight.

Where had it come from? Either Lang had been totally distracted from driving or the truck was moving far too fast for the twists of the tortured road.

Lang leaned into a sweeping right-hand turn and set up for a hairpin to the left. No doubt about it, the truck was gaining on them, swerving all over the road as it struggled to stay on the pavement. Lang could see the bed swaying wildly, almost enough to turn the rig over. He listened for the hiss of air brakes, a sound that didn't come. Maybe the driver was drunk or the brakes had failed. No sober, sane person would risk running off the road where the shoulders between asphalt and empty space were so thin.

Lang searched ahead for a turnoff, even a space between paving and mountainside. There were none. Straight drop right, perpendicular rise left. Nowhere to go.

Tiny, cold feet of apprehension began to walk up Lang's back. The truck got bigger in the mirrors.

The bike made a right-hand turn and entered a straightaway of perhaps two hundred yards. Its mirrors no longer reflected the entire truck. Lang could clearly see the prancing lion of Peugeot on the grill. Over the hiss of the airstream, he could hear the truck driver shifting through higher gears.

The idiot had no intent of slowing down.

Taking his left hand from the handlebar, Lang tapped Gurt's leg and pointed behind. He heard a German expletive over the roar of the truck's engine. She squeezed him tighter.

The bike shuddered as its fiberglass rear fender shattered and Lang braced against the impact. The bastard intended to run them over! He opened the throttle to the stop.

How had they found him? How could they have possibly known he was driving a motorcycle to Orvieto? Lang shoved the questions from his mind. Right now, he needed to concentrate on keeping the Beamer on the pavement.

If he could beat the truck into the next curve, it would either have to slow down or be flung off the side of the mountain by centrifugal force. Too bad he wasn't on a machine known for speed rather than comfort.

He sensed the massive bumper inches from the rear wheel again as he swung wide, the better to straighten the line through the curve. The bike's speed pushed it to the outside, well across the center line. If something were on the other side of the blind turn, headed uphill, they would meet it head-on. A risk he had to take or be crushed.

They flashed through the shadow of the hill, relieved to finally hear the snort of air brakes as they reentered sunshine. They had gained a hundred feet or so.

Lang tested the throttle again, making sure it was still as open as it would go. The grip was wet with sweat and his hand slipped. He wished he had found a pair of gloves.

The mirrors were empty only for a second until the ugly snout of the truck poked around the turn like a beast seeking prey. Lang was trying to remember the trip up, how far, he and Gurt were from the bottom. If they could make it to a flat road where the Peugeot would not have a downslope to add to its speed, even the BMW's indifferent acceleration would leave the truck behind.

If.

The truck closed the gap again, its engine bellowing in triumph. The motorcycle simply could go no faster.

Gurt shifted. She had to know movement could destroy the balance of the bike, send them flying into space.

Lang wanted to turn around and scream at her to be still but he couldn't take even that brief second away from watching the road. Not at this pace. He felt one arm clasp around his chest while Gurt seemed to be bending over. The Krausers. Christ, this was no time to be searching through the saddlebags for something she might have forgotten to bring! Lang could see in the periphery of one mirror as she stood on the rear pegs and turned to face the truck, using the arm around Lang to sustain her balance. The interruption of the BMW's airstream, the added resistance of her erect body, made the front end shimmy. Had Lang not needed to fight to maintain steering, he would have risked taking a hand off the bars to snatch her back onto her seat.

Not that it mattered. The grille of the truck looked like a chrome mouth about to open and devour them both. And there wasn't a damn thing Lang could do.

One, then two pops were snatched away by the wind: muted both by helmet and rushing air. A blowout! Lang instantly anticipated the loss of control that came with losing a tire at high speed. Instead, there were three more sounds, a shallow noise like slow clapping. The BMW's only wobble was from Gurt standing in the airstream.

A flick of his eyes from the road to the mirrors saw the truck rapidly receding, the sun a million diamonds on its crazed windshield. In near disbelief, he watched its swerving increase in ever larger curves until, amid a wail of protesting rubber, it launched itself over the side of the road like a huge rocket. It seemed to hang in emptiness before its nose pointed down and it was swallowed by space like the souls in the fresco. Lang thought he felt the road quiver with a series of impacts downhill.

Gurt sat back down and returned her arm to his waist. He detected a whiff of cordite before the wind devoured it, and he realized what had happened.

As the slope gentled, the road widened until it reached a verge wide enough for Lang to pull off and stop. He pulled out the BMW's ignition key. Neither he nor Gurt moved or spoke, letting the heat from the cylinder heads seep through their leathers as the cooling machinery ticked.

Lang finally took off his helmet and turned to watch Gurt unbuckle hers. "I had forgotten you won the Agency's shooting competition in eighty-seven. Pistol and rifle, if I recall."

She smiled demurely as though he had complimented a new dress. "Eighty-eight and eighty-nine also. After that, I quit competing."

"What happened to the gun?"

"Over the hillside along with the Schweinhund in the truck. When the police find the wreck, they are likely to start interrogating anyone in the area. There are bullet holes in the windscreen. I didn't want to have a weapon on me." "The gun is clean?"

She was leaning forward, inspecting her makeup in the bike's mirrors, more like a debutante than someone who had just made a shot James Bond wouldn't have dared. "It is Agency-issue. My gloves prevented my fingers from printing on it or powder marks on my hands for paraffin to detect. I need only to also dispose of the extra clip in the Krausers."

"Should we go back, see what happened to the driver?"

She turned from the mirror to ruefully regard the cracked fiberglass of the BMW's rear fender. "And have the authorities show up while we're poking around? I do not think they would listen to the explanations of an international fugitive."

Lang thought about that. "There may be a clue as to who he is, was."

"Perhaps if you take off your leathers, put them back in the bags, I will go back alone. If the police come, they will never connect a woman to such a shooting. They are, after all, Italian. They will think it was an attempted high-john."

"Hijack."

"Him, too. I will see if the driver has any identification. I will also make sure he is unable to tell anyone what happened."

He watched her ride off. Kipling, he thought, must have known someone like Gurt when he wrote that "the female of the species is more deadly than the male."

5

The Umbrian Auto Strada

Thirty minutes later

Lang waited in one of the road stops that litter the Auto Strada. With its islands of gas pumps, cafeterias and bathrooms reeking of disinfectant, it could just as well have been on the interstates of New York or on Florida's Sunshine State Parkway. Why does America export only the tacky? Lang had a theory that someday all of Europe would look like Kansas or, worse, California. With that to look forward to, how could anybody be in favor of globalization?

He was thinking of something else that day, however. The cappuccino in front of him was simply his ticket of admission, the price to be paid for a seat at the bar. The caffeine provided a small high, lost in the tide of adrenaline that was just now beginning to ebb. How had he lived this long without the rush only danger gives? Even if his job at the Agency had never involved a life-or-death situation, a shoot-out, or a high-speed chase, it had been exciting to plan the smuggling of a defector across an armed border. Even guessing an opponent's next move on the chessboard of Europe had its thrills before the red king and its pawns were swept from the table.

Now all he had to look forward to was verbal fencing in a courtroom, a competition as highly stylized as any Kabuki performance. At this moment, he missed the game more than he had ever anticipated. The fast-paced developments and the challenge had faded into a memory he suspected was tainted by nostalgia as he had pursued the crushing sameness of law school and practice. At the time, it had been more than an even swap: the certainty he would be coming home every evening in exchange for broken promises and a wife sick with worry when he could only tell her he would be gone for an undetermined period.

Dawn wasn't here anymore and Lang was involved in a game with stakes higher than he would have chosen. Even the Reds, those world-threatening hoards of Godless communists, the Agency's raison d'être, had not been fanatics. At least, not the ones he had known. He had never heard of an opposing agent willing, let alone eager, to die for Marxism like a mujahedeen ready to sacrifice all for Allah. They, the name Lang had unconsciously pasted on the unknown group, They were as zealous as any bomb-toting Arab terrorist. His would-be assassin had dashed across the room to jump, to meet whatever maker he contemplated, rather than risk capture. The driver of that truck could not have expected to survive the crash his speed made inevitable oh that winding road. He had only hoped to take the two motorcyclists with him to whatever place he thought worth his life on earth.

For what?

To Lang, such fervor implied religion, a religious group, more likely a cult. History was replete with dismal examples: the Moslem cult of Assassins, from whom we take the word, who had greeted the Crusaders with nocturnal knives, the Hindu Thuggee, stealthy stranglers of the imperial English, Japanese kamikaze dying for their emperor-god.

Brother Marcenni's explanation had given Lang an idea 'why They might want the picture, might kill to get it. All sorts of wealth could be hidden somewhere, Poussin's painting the key to its location. But he'd never heard of martyrs for material riches. Men died for causes, for ideas, for vengeance. But for earthly wealth they would never possess?

But then, the old monk hadn't said the picture was a map to pirates' gold, buried treasure or the like, had he? But why else would a painting, one that did not even exactly copy the original, be worth killing for? Something of ideological value?

Like what, the holy grail?

There were some facts of which Lang was fairly certain. They wanted the painting and intended to eradicate anyone who might have learned its secret. That secret had to do with the physical location of something of great value to Them. Lang was interested in what that something might be. It could lead him to whoever had killed Janet and Jeff. And tried to kill him. Now that he knew the painting might have a secret, he needed to find out who was guarding the truth the enigma concealed. And why.

He had a plan.

There was a hush in the crowded room as Gurt entered and took the vacant seat at the bar beside Lang. A six-foot Valkyrie in motorcycle leathers was apparently not a common sight. Oblivious to the eyes following her every breath, she lit a Marlboro and motioned to the man behind the bar, pointing to Lang's cup. She also wanted cappuccino.

Lang would have bet that was the fastest service the barman had provided in weeks. He grinned as the hum of conversation resumed. "You make quite an entrance."

She took a deep drag from the cigarette, speaking through the haze of her own tobacco smoke. "They'll get over it."

He waited impatiently for her to tell what she had found. She waited until she tasted her coffee.

"Well?"

With her free hand, she reached into a pocket and held up a silver chain. From it dangled the same design Lang had seen in Atlanta, four triangles meeting in the center of a circle.

She let the pendant twirl on the chain. "No papers, no wallet, no identification other than this."

"I take it he was…?"

"As a herring."

"Mackerel."

"Why should one fish be more dead than another? The jewelry mean anything to you?"

"Same as the man who broke into my apartment in Atlanta had."

She stubbed out her cigarette and put the circle on its chain back into a pocket of the leathers."Would have been easier to have used a rifle than a truck. Any guess why he tried to run us under instead of taking an easy shot from behind a tree?"

Lang wasn't eager to question the wisdom of the decision that had left Gurt and him alive, but he said, "Maybe there was some reason for us to die in a traffic accident."

Gurt shrugged as though it was a matter of no consequence. "Dead is dead. And we aren't. What's next?"

"I need to get out of Italy, go to London."

Lang saw an instant of uncertainty. There is no word for "go" in Gurt's native tongue. Germans fly, walk, drive, etcetera. The means of transportation denotes going. One would not, for example, gehen, walk, to the United States but would flugen, fly.

"Not easy," she said. "By now your picture will be in the hands of every police force in Europe."

She was right. But Lang said, "Since the Common Market, no one guards borders anymore." He signaled the barman for two more coffees. "If I could get on a plane at an airport that doesn't have flights to or from places outside Europe, there would be no customs and immigration. I'd only have to worry about being recognized by an airport cop and a half-decent disguise would solve that problem."

"You'd still have to show your passport to get on the flight."

"Seems I remember someone who…"

She looked around, apprehensive that the conversation might be overheard."Yes, yes, the engraver behind the jewelry shop on the Via Garibaldi. If there were two of us, your disguise would be even better. The police aren't looking for a couple."

"Thanks, but I don't want you at risk."

"Risk, he says!" Those eyebrows arched again. "And what do you think we were in back there on the road, an English tea party?"

"You want to help, see if you know someone in S &T who can fix up a disguise."

Science and Technology, the Agency's Second Directorate, the L. L. Bean of espionage, equipping agents with everything from radio transmitters that fit into the heel of a shoe to umbrellas that shot poison darts.

She stared hard at her cup. "Either I go with you or you'll get no help from me. I'm not going to assist in your getting killed."

Lang pondered this development. Gurt was no damsel in distress whom he would have to worry about every minute. She had just proved that. Still, exposing her to Them…

"Your engraver," she added as though aware he was weighing his options. "He is in prison for counterfeiting."

"You're very persuasive," he said. "You can get S &T's help, assuming they still do that sort of thing?"

She drained her cup, making a face at the bitterness of the dregs. "Science and Technology are still with us, yes. They could certainly come up with a disguise your mother wouldn't recognize. But for who? I mean, they are not going to help an ex-employee evade the police. And there are requisition forms, authorizations…"

The Agency, like any branch of government, ran on a high-octane mixture of paperwork and red tape. As part of the Peace Dividend, employees like Lang had been allowed to retire without replacement. Except in the First Directorate, Administration, the home of the paper shufflers, where bureaucrats were still plentiful as cockroaches. And, like the insect, could survive anything, budget cut or nuclear attack. These were the people who required the endless forms that justified their existence.

"Not worth the trouble," Lang conceded. "I still remember how to make myself over so you wouldn't recognize me."

"With your clothes on or off?"

He ignored her. "I'll need some cash. Quite a bit, actually, since I can't use an ATM. Withdrawals from my account can be too easily traced. I'll need clothes and stuff, too, since mine are at the pensione. It wouldn't be smart to go back there. That leaves the passport and the usual: driver's license, credit cards, etcetera. You can get all that?"

"As long as you understand I'm coming with you."

"You drive a real bargain."

"It is for your own safety. You cannot, as you say, watch your own ass."

"You can just take off?"

"I have vacation time coming."

Lang knew when he was whipped, the value of a strategic retreat. "Okay, let's go back to your place in Rome and get what we need. Just remember, I warned you, this isn't some sort of war game."

She smiled sweetly, speaking with that mellifluous Southern accent much imitated by those who have never been south of Washington. "Why, mah deah, that is the most gracious invitation Ah have evah received."

Lang didn't even try to guess what Rhett might have replied.

THE TEMPLARS:

THE END OF AN ORDER

An Account by Pietro of Sicily

Translation from the medieval Latin by Nigel Wolffe, Ph.D.

2

Even before the sun had reached its zenith, the heat persuaded Guillaume de Poitiers to shed greave and sabaton,¹ remaining armoured only in breastplate, pallette and brassard² over his hauberk. Over all his military garments was the white robe that floated about him like a cloud.

He professed no discomfort, relating to us some of the hardships encountered in combating the abominable Turks: the land deserted, waterless and uninhabitable. Therein he and his comrades found not the manna God provided the Israelites in the wilderness but prickly plants with scant moisture or nutriment. More than once, he and his fellows had eaten their warhorses and left mangonel³ ram, scaling ladders and other implements of battle in the sand for want of a means to transport them.

His esquire, a young man a few years older than I, had been christened Phillipe. He had, just as I did, no memory of temporal family, having been raised as a child by the Knights of the Temple.

In the dust raised by Guillaume's steed, we toiled along on the heavily laden ass. Phillipe entertained me with tales of exotic lands far beyond my mean knowledge. He had been with his master since Cyprus and had shared the privations of the voyage from there. Twice they had been beset upon by pirates from Africa; twice their faith and a wind sent by God, had delivered them.

At the risk of the sins of gluttony and greed, I asked Phillipe again and again about the food and quarters I could expect. He verified what his master had said: Meat was served twice a day, and brothers, whether knights, esquires or others slept on pallets stuffed with straw which was changed weekly. There was a stream nearby so that one might bathe should the weather not be intemperate. Indeed, it may have been at this time I became so engrossed in the luxuries awaiting me that I almost forgot that my purpose was to serve God, not my own desires. It may well be for this that I am to be punished.

We made our way up Monte San Giuliano, a name that seemed to bode well, being nearly the same as our knight's in the local dialect.⁴ At the top was the city of Erice, encased in the walls built by the Norman kings.⁵ Here we spent the night in an abbey not unlike the one I had departed. So enraptured was I by the promises of things to come that I was disappointed by fare identical to that I had consumed all my life.

So mean had places dedicated to worship and meditation become to me in my anticipation that I was impatient for. Prime to end so we might come one day closer to Burgundy. Once again, our departure was made in the dark.

The morning was not yet bright enough to illuminate the road down the mountain, a path so tightly convoluted as to make it impossible to see around the next turn. I was glad to be riding the ass whose agility far exceeded that of the lumbering horses which we had to guide carefully lest they misstep and fall into the valley below.

We had gone a scant dozen furlongs⁶ beyond the city's gate when we came around a bend· and encountered men in the road. The morning had by then acquired just enough light to show the cudgels⁷ they carried. Even in the sheltered life I had led, I knew that men upon a public road without beasts or women were more likely to be miscreants than travelers.

I clasped the rosary around my neck and began to pray for St. Christopher's intercession, for, although I had nothing worthy of stealing, I had heard men such as these usually left their victims dead or nearly so. Indeed, was that not the lesson of Our Lord's parable of the Good Samaritan?

If the poor light and devious road had prevented us from seeing these vile knaves, it had likely prevented them from seeing that one of our number was a knight with all the armour and weapons of that state.

As they advanced, Guillaume de Poitiers turned his white charger and trotted back to us so serenely as to deny he was about to enter the arena of battle.⁸ From the impedimenta upon the back on one of the tethered horses trailing behind Philippe and myself, he drew his great sword and lifted his shield. Holding the blade in one hand and the shield in the other, he turned his horse and spurred it towards those who meant us harm.

"God's will be done!" he shouted as he thundered down the narrow path.

A knight on horseback is more than a match for men on foot armed only with clubs and short knives, as I was about to witness.

The men in the road apprehended their fate and began to scatter, condemned by their choice of location. There was no means for them to escape other than down the road or over the precipitous edge to near-certain destruction.

Our knight stood in the stirrups and swung that mighty blade, cleaving one man's head and shoulders from a body that ran one Dr two more steps before falling in a sea of his own blood. The next man shared his companion's fate. Two more jumped into the abyss rather than being skewered like swine above a fire.

Although I had seen men· die of the fever or simply because God had willed it, I had,never witnessed souls depart this life with so much blood. Even though these men had meant us evil, I was distressed there was no priest available to administer a final unction. I said a speedy prayer for these robbers in hopes of preventing eternal torture of their souls, a revenge no Christian could desire even for those as foul as these. We are, after all, brothers in that we are children of the Lord of Heaven.

If Guillaume de Poitiers harbored such thoughts, he did not reveal them. Instead, he stood in the stirrups again, signaling us to move forward with his sword.

"Are you well, m'lord?" Phillipe asked his master as soon as we had drawn near enough to be heard.

The knight gave us that laugh as he handed his bloody sword, hilt first, to Phillipe. "Praise God, as well as a man can be who has just sent scoundrels to their proper place in hell. We must hasten to find the rest, for surely their encampment is nearby."

I am ignorant as to how he knew this to be so but it was not my station to question the judgement of a knight of God. And as the land became flat, we smelled smoke. A trace of it could be seen against the sky, now brilliant with morning's full light. At the edge of the road, he bade us be quiet, took a fresh mount and led us into a forest so thick it was as if twilight had come.

Shortly we came a clearing. A few mean twig huts were gathered around a central fire over which a hind was roasting, poached from the local lord. These varlets ate far better that those in the service of God.

About the fire were a number of women, some suckling infants. The only men to be seen were old or visibly disabled, no doubt from a life of knavery. Upon seeing our knight, those that could scattered like a covey of partridge. The balance retreated into the crude shelters.

Guillaume de Poitiers disdained following those who had fled. Instead, he leaned from his great warhorse, taking a burning faggot from the fire with which he lit the hovels. As we left, I could hear the screams of those trapped with the conflagration.

"Sir," I asked, "I can understand your putting to flight those who would have robbed us, but is it not unchristian to put to the torch those who have done us no evil?"

He inclined his head as he stroked his beard before replying. "Those who would have robbed us are succored by those we have destroyed. They are but vile creatures, serfs illegally escaped their master who intend to live a life causing mischief to travelers such as we. Their destruction is no more than the killing of vermin in the grain house."

This did not comport with my understanding of the teachings of Our Lord that even the lowest among us are as brothers. But I was young, ignorant and in the company of a man who had fought and bled for Christ, so I changed the direction of my query.

"But sir, you did not look into the eyes of those you killed here," I said, remembering the remark he had made about his wound. "They died in their huts, baking like so much bread."

He nodded, that smile on his lips. "You remember well, little brother. But there are exceptions to every rule. Those men in their shelters died of fire, one of God's four elements."

I knew the four elements consisted of fire, water, wind and earth, but I knew not what pertinence this had to killing. I indulged myself in the sin of pride. I was ashamed to admit I knew not.

Within a few hours we entered the city of Trapani, the name meaning "sickle" in Greek because of the crescent shape of the harbor there. As I have said, until this time I had never been more than a day's journey by foot from my home. I had, of course, heard of the sea, but that is different from seeing it. Thinking of those waters like those on which Our Lord walked and in which His apostles fished, I had not imagined anything like what greeted us. I am ashamed to admit my faith was so little that I could not have imagined the fashioning of anything so deeply blue, so restless or so vast. I had been used to seeing hills and mountains, trees and streams. But here I could see to the very edge of the earth.

Nor had I seen ships before, huge carts that floated upon the water with great white sails, each vessel with enough cloth to blanket the abbey I had left. There seemed to be thousands of these craft, crowding each other as they rose and fell with each breath of the mighty ocean.⁹ This huge fleet, I was told, belonged entirely to the Templars who, after paying what amounted to extortion to the Venetians to leave the Holy Land, had decided to purchase their own ships.¹⁰ Those members who had not already done so had gathered here to journey to their home temples.

For days we waited for a wind that would take us northward along the coast of Italy to Genoa and then to the coast of Burgundy. But even the size of these craft to the vastness of the sea, even my faith did not prevent me from becoming trepidant. This I recognized as my weakness, my failing, that I was unable to be comforted that God's will would be done.

During the time in Trapani, I came to realize Guillaume de Poitiers was not alone different from the poor monks with whom I had lived. All his Templar brethren lived well. Although it is hardly man's place in God's scheme to judge, I noted humility and poverty did not number among their attributes. They enjoyed great quantities of unwatered wine (which they were quick to condemn as inferior to the wines of other regions) and were profligate in their habits. Gaming was as common among them as prayer as was recounting stories in which the narrator was the hero, usually a little bit more so than his predecessor.

I was to learn a number of the Holy See's rules did not apply to this Order. This may well have carried the seeds of its fall from grace, a fall as disastrous if less spectacular than Satan's from Heaven.

Translator's Notes

1. Armour shielding leg and foot

2. Armour covering the arms, shoulders and upper body

3. A device for throwing large rocks, like a catapult

4. The Italian equivalent of William is Guglielmo

5. 1091-1250

6. Approximately 650 meters

7. The word Pietro uses is cycgel, Frankish for either a short heavy club or a weapon used to beat upon an opponent. In this context, it is doubtful these people would have weapons more sophisticated than could be fashioned from readily available material.

8. The author uses liste, a Frankish word which later came to include the areas used for knightly competition. Since the sport of jousting between knights was unknown at the time of Pietro's narrative, the earlier meaning of the word is used.

9. The hyperbole here is Pietro's, not the translator's.

10. There are no consistent records as to the number of ships owned by the Templars, but it is unlikely that the entire fleet would have been at an obscure Sicilian port at once or that all the ships in port would have been theirs.

1

Atlanta

The same day

Morse was slouched in his chair, studying another fax, this one from the Department of Defense, Bureau of Records, St. Louis.

Reilly's dates of service matched what Morse remembered him saying, even confirmed a· bullet lodged between the seventh and eighth cervical vertebrae. If Morse understood the medical jargon correctly, the examining doctor had adopted an attitude of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Attempting surgery to cut the damn bullet out could sever some nerve with a long name. Made sense.

Morse sat up so suddenly the casters on his chair slammed against the gray carpet with a thud, causing the detective in the cubicle next to his to look up from her computer with a glare.

"C-seven and C-eight?" he said to no one in particular before he picked up the phone and dialed the medical examiner's number from memory.

The first person he spoke to confirmed his suspicion: There was no eighth cervical vertebra. The thoracic spine began after the seventh cervical disk.

Mistake?

Could be.

He reached into the inside pocket of the suit coat draped over the back of his chair and produced his notebook. It didn't take long to find the number for Reilly's office. Now, if he could just get the minimal cooperation if the lawyer's secretary…

2

Atlanta: Offices of Arnold Krause, MD.

Morse hated doctors' offices even when he was not a patient. The worn and outdated magazines and the cheap furniture were almost as bad as the receptionist's, "The doctor'll be right with you," a promise uniformly and cheerfully given but rarely kept. He had a theory that there was a school somewhere that recycled lobotomy patients to work the hunt desks of physicians' offices.

His badge made a difference. He hardly had time to settle in with a month-old copy of People before he was ushered into an office where diplomas and certificates covered more of the walls than the dark paneling.

"Arnold Krause." A short man in a white coat entered the room right after Morse and circled him to stand behind a desk and extend his hand. "Understand you're interested in Mr. Reilly's records."

Morse savored the nervousness most people exhibited around policemen. "That's right, Doctor. There be no doctor-patient privilege in Georgia…"

Krause plopped into a leather chair behind the desk and slid a manila folder and a large envelope across the polished mahogany. "As I'm well aware. Still, we don't usually turn over medical records without a subpoena. But where a patient is subject to an investigation…"

Morse sat in a wing chair across the desk and began to thumb through the file. "I appreciate your not insisting on the formalities."

"We try to cooperate with law enforcement," the doctor said, closely watching where Morse directed his attention.

Morse read the typed notes of last fall's physical. Reilly seemed to be in good health. Impatiently, he opened the envelope, dumping X-rays onto the desk. He held them up one by one to the light from the office's only window until he found the one he was looking for.

He handed it to the doctor. "This be the neck, right?"

Krause whirled in his chair to place the X rayon a viewer built into the wall. Fluorescent light flickered and came on. "The bottom of the cervical spine, yes. Actually, the picture is a chest X-ray."

It was obvious the doctor wanted to ask why Morse wanted to know.

Morse ignored the implicit question. "And there be no foreign objects imbedded in Mr. Reilly's cervical spine, right?"

The doctor's face wrinkled into a puzzled frown. "Foreign object? Like…?"

"Like a bullet."

The doctor paled visibly. "A bullet?"

Morse leaned across the desk. "What I said, a bullet. If one were there, we'd see it, right?"

Krause nodded. "I'd certainly think so. But why…?"

"In your examination of Mr. Reilly, you never saw a scar, anything that would indicate he'd either been shot there or had a bullet removed?"

The doctor shook his head. "No, nothing. But why…?"

Morse stood, hand extended. "You've been very helpful, Doc."

Krause took the extended hand gingerly, as though he thought it might break. "You think Mr. Reilly has been shot in the neck?"

Morse turned to go. "Somebody sure does."

3

Atlanta: Parking deck of Piedmont Medical Center

Morse handed over a wad of bills and the gate out of the parking lot lifted. It was one of the rare times he didn't count his change. He was too preoccupied with a wound shown by records but not by physical exam.

He had no trouble with a man making up a military career. Lots of men did that, pretended they had been in combat when they hadn't gotten any closer to the enemy than the officers' club. Or claimed military service when they hadn't worn a uniform since the Boy Scouts. But he'd never seen the service itself fabricate a Purple Heart.

Why would they do that?

He fiddled with the air-conditioning in the unmarked department-issue Ford, grimacing when warm air came out of the vents. He sighed and rolled down the window.

They would do that because Mr. Reilly had never been a SEAL, probably never been in the navy, because someone preferred Mr. Reilly's past not be subject to scrutiny.

That was the only answer Morse could come up with.

He grimaced again, this time from the thought of the can of worms that thought opened up. If some nameless, faceless bureaucrat had given Reilly a bogus past, his real past would, most likely, come under the huge and ill defined umbrella known as national security. In a word, Mr. Reilly had been some sort of a spook. Or still was.

And if Mr. Reilly was still in the spook business, he didn't have to have a reason to kill Halvorson. Or throw the other guy from his balcony, either, for that matter. Somebody in Washington could have decided the doorman was actually an agent for some terrorist cell and ordered him terminated. Or that the alleged burglar was bin Laden's brother-in-law, for that matter.

Morse slammed on the brakes, almost running a red light.

National security or not, people didn't get away with murder, not on Morse's watch. He'd report his suspicion to the federal boys to add to their international alert. Maybe they could pry something out of the cloak-and-dagger crowd, find out who Reilly knew in Rome, where he might be hiding.