The Sinai Secret

FORTY-SEVEN

Middle Temple Inn

London

The only other exit from Jacob's office was two windows behind his desk, the old-fashioned kind that actually opened. In a step Lang slid one pane up and looked out. Two floors down to a concrete walkway that would surely shatter a bone or two on impact. At each end stood a man in a suit with the unmistakable look of a cop. A tree's branches beckoned, but Lang discarded the idea. The sound of him grabbing a leafy bough would alert the pair below.

Another blow and the groan of hinges unable to hold much longer sent Lang through the window to a tenuous perch on the keystone of the arch framing the window below. Face pressed against the building, he extended the fingers of his right hand to claw for purchase in the cracks and crevices of the ancient stone, while his left maintained a death grip on the sill of the window he had just exited.

Another window was to his right, across a tantalizingly short chasm three or four feet away.

Lang forced himself not to look down as his left shoe crept along the extrados of the arch below until it found a narrow hold where centuries of weather had eroded one stone slightly more than the other.

Once, twice, he pawed the air with his right foot.

Inches short.

Lang took one, two deep breaths.

Just as he heard Jacob's voice followed by harsh commands, he lunged. His right foot teetered on the adjacent arch as both hands scraped the sill of the window above. His fingers met impassive stone and began to slip as he pushed with his feet.

At what he would later regard as the last possible second, his fingers grasped a niche running along the sill, a crack perhaps left when the medieval opaque glass shutter-type panes were replaced with ones that opened from the top and bottom.

Mentally offering thanks to a deity of whose existence he was less than certain, Lang worked his fingers underneath the bottom pane and pushed upward. Next door he could hear a voice asking questions in a raised voice. He could not make out Jacob's answers.

He wriggled over and across the sill, falling to the floor inside. Hei was in an office similar to Jacob's, though far more orderly. He paused, hardly daring to breathe, as he waited for the occupants to raise an outcry. As he glanced around the small room, he realized he was alone. The computer terminal on the desk was turned off, as was the gooseneck lamp beside the keyboard. An old-fashioned brass hatrack stood sentinel by the door to what Lang supposed was the outer office. From it hung a barrister's black robe.

Lang stood up and glanced around the space from where he stood, desperate for anything that might be of help when the police began their inevitable search of the building. A small leather box sat on a battered tea table between two club chairs across from the desk. In a step he had the box in hand. He had seen one like that before, seen it…

Opening the hinged top he was rewarded with what he expected: a periwig, the white wig of short hair on top and curls down the sides worn before English juries, just like the one he had seen in Jacob's office a few years before.

Feeling more than slightly silly, he perched it on his head and slipped on the robe. A bit short, but it would have to do.

He grabbed a briefcase before fumbling with a cranky dead bolt on the front door and letting himself out into the hall.

A group of what he gathered were the building's tenants was gathered around the open door of Jacob's office, curious as to what had caused the police to interrupt the centuries of scholarly discourse and professional courtesy at the Middle Temple Inn. No one was interested in a lone barrister, briefcase in hand, scurrying for the staircase and the Old Bailey across the street. The two men guarding the entrance were too busy speculating what was going on inside to notice a barrister late for court, head down, searching the depths of his attache for some critical paper as he hurried along.

Once across Fleet Street, Lang submitted to the metal detectors of London's oldest criminal court and entered the rabbit warren that had been in use for four hundred years, although most criminal cases were now heard in newer quarters. He paused at a door marked with a primitive figure of a man above the letters WC and went inside. Making sure he was alone, he deposited wig, gown, and briefcase inside one of the toilet stalls and left the building by a side door.

Lang ducked into the first London Underground entrance he came to. He wished it were later in the day, making it easier to hide among the commuters who would flood the system in an hour or so. As it was, he felt conspicuous sharing a nearly empty car. His only companions were a pair of nannies conversing in some African dialect over the howls coming from matching prams, and asingle man, intent on a racing form advertising the services of Murphy and Quint, Turf Accountants.

As he changed to the Picadilly line, one of the infants was still managing to voice its outrage around the bottle with which his nanny had unsuccessfully tried to quiet him.

Had the British had to deal with their own squalling offspring, they would never have had time to raise the Union Jack over half the world.

Mary Poppins: the cornerstone of empire.

In a car filled largely with American tourists headed for London's largest shopping and entertainment district, Lang felt oddly alien. He envied them their laughter, the fact that they were here purely for the pleasure of travel.

How had the cops known where he would be? Most likely because of the incidents a few years ago, when Jacob had been identified as a contact in the city. Okay, he told himself, but how had they even known he was in the country? His passport had drawn no more than a perfunctory electronic scan upon arrival.

He had only to glance up at a camera attached to the car's ceiling. Surveillance equipment. As common in London as fish and chips. He had been made before he even left the airport.

But why?

As far as he knew, a passport violation would have been handled by Her Majesty's immigration service, not police. So there must be another reason, one he was fairly certain was not going to make him a happier man.

He got off at Picadilly and walked over to Regent Street and paused to inspect the equestrian stature of William of Orange dressed as Caesar. Or in drag. The thing always made him smile when he envisioned some American politician similarly represented. They tended to straddle issues, not horses.

As he surveyed the sculpture, he looked for the surveillance camera, finally spotting it almost hidden by the pediment of what he guessed was a Victorian's idea of a Greek Revival facade. He picked up a newspaper from a nearby kiosk and pretended to read so that the paper was between his face and the cameras as he circled the block.

Although he was fairly certain he was alone, he stopped long enough to use a shop window as a mirror to make sure.

Then he crossed over to 47 Jermyn Street and stood before an unmarked door beside which were a column of names, each above a bell button. Below was a speaker.

The odds were that, sooner or later, at least one thing would go his way today, and it did. Nellie was still in business.

During his years with the Agency, Lang had an all-too-brief assignment to the London Station. Nellie had been carried on the payroll as a psychological therapist.

Her actual job was slightly less academic if greatly more successful in aligning psyches along the right track. She ran a stable of call girls.

When a defector from one of the Eastern European workers' paradises made it safely from behind the Iron Curtain, he usually wanted three things immediately: a woman, decent whiskey, and American cigarettes.

Nellie could provide all three.

On more than one occasion it had been Lang's job to. go to Nellie's place, select a woman, and bring her back to whatever safe house was serving as a debriefing center at the time. Nellie had often chided him for not wanting to sample the merchandise, even tempting him with an occasional freebie.

"I'll just look and not touch," had been his constant refrain. He had not wanted to offend such a valuable asset by explaining that he had a strong aversion to the potential health problems just then beginning to enter the public domain: AIDS and herpes had taken the place of the generic clap that would succumb to two or three shots of penicillin. Lang was not about to take a chance of having to try to convince Dawn, his then-fiancee, that the Agency's toilet seats were infected.

Plus, should the shit ever hit the congressional fan, using his employment to get freebies from a brothel keeper would be regarded with great disapproval.

Still, he and Nellie had maintained a friendship, one she had renewed a couple of years before, when, as now, Lang needed a friend not stored in any law enforcement records.

He pushed the buzzer.

His felt a slight chill begin to creep up his neck when there was no response. Then he realized Nellie and most of her crew were probably just now beginning to stir. Their working day would not begin for an hour or two yet.

The third try produced a drowsy, "'Oos there?"

Lang looked around, reluctant to speak his name aloud. Tell Nellie the guy who just looks is back."

He was fairly certain the comment would be assumed to be an announcement of some sexual perversion by the woman on the other end, but he was rewarded by a voice he recognized.

"Lang, you have come back! Perhaps now…?"

"Just buzz me in, Nellie."

There was a click and Lang opened the door.

At the top of a staircase stood a woman he knew was well past fifty. But she didn't look a day beyond thirty. Her profile was clean, unblurred by the sags and wrinkles time inflicted, a testament to the plastic surgeon in Switzerland she regularly visited. Her eyes still had the slight Asian slant of the Eastern European, perhaps the only clue that she had come to London as Neleska Dwvorsik, wife of a Hungarian defector whom she soon dumped for the oldest of capitalistic enterprises.

As he reached the top, he was standing in what could have been the lobby of a modestly priced hotel. Sofas and chairs were scattered about, most in front of TV sets. What wouldn't be seen in public accommodations was the group of young women lounging about in various states of undress. Of every race and most nationalities, they paid little attention to Lang, even though most customers never came here; this was home base for work all over the city.

Nellie embraced Lang with a strength surprising for her size, and wet lips touched his cheek. "You have decided it is time to quit just looking, Lang? We even have an American girl or two, but I'd recommend one just arrived from Hong Kong."

Lang shook his head slowly, as though in regret. "Not this time, Nellie. Can you put me up for a couple of days?"

She laughed evilly, taking his hand and leading him farther into the room." 'Put you up'? What is this 'put up'? Is something my girls can do in bed?"

"No, Nellie. As inviting as the prospect might be, I need to, er, hide out for a day or two."

"The place is yours, Lang. If you want anything, or any person, ask."