The Sinai Secret

SIX

Park Place

2660 Peachtree Road

Atlanta, Georgia

The Next Morning

Grumps, the fur-bearing alarm clock, pressed his cold nose against Lang's cheek. If a dog could actually smile, this one would have laughed as his master ran a hand across his sleep-relaxed face.

"Okay, Grumps. Just another couple of minutes, all right?"

Grumps knew the game. This time he growled deeply and began methodically removing the covers.

Lang sat up. "Okay, okay, you win, as always."

The clear victor, Grumps sat and began to casually scratch his head with a rear paw. Black, with one floppy ear and the other erect, the dog had genes that contained more breeds than there were types of rum in tropical drinks.

From his bedroom window on the twenty-fourth floor, Lang could see the morning sun tinting the glass of Midtown's buildings with gold. The older structures of downtown even glowed. Like an urban yellow brick road, Peachtree Street seemed like an arrow pointing to the heart of the city. A cloudless sky roofed the vivid green of trees still in their early spring colors. The verdant carpet was dotted with splotches of snowdrifts that were dogwoods in full bloom above pink-and-white azaleas.

All of this natural beauty had a price that Lang would pay as soon as he exited the protective lobby of his building. Slimy yellow-green mist would color the air outside as well as every surface exposed to it. Cars became yellow, no matter their factory paint jobs. Black asphalt was tinted the same with dry rivers. Transplanted allergy sufferers cursed the day they left the relative comfort of Northern spring freezes.

Spring had come and reproductive romance was on the mind of every living plant, from mighty oak to tiny ragweed. Atlanta's pollen season was in full swing.

By the time Lang had pulled on a sweat suit and stuck bare feet into a pair of sneakers, Grumps was waiting anxiously by the door, leash in mouth. Outside, the dog made his usual methodical search for the perfect place to leave his mark for the next canine to come along. Once finished, he tugged impatiently to return. It was time for breakfast.

Back inside, Lang opened the cabinet where he stored the dog food and poured some into a bowl.

Only as he was returning the bag did he stop in midreach and stare.

He had fed Grumps last night just before he left to go to Manuel's. The dog food bag had been next to a cereal box. Now there was space for it only next to a stack of soup cans.

He carefully set the bag on the counter that separated the tiny kitchen from the living room. In three steps he was standing in front of the Thomas Elfe secretary, a masterpiece in mahogany and fruitwood inlay by one of America's premier prerevolutionary cabinetmakers and one of the few pieces of furniture he had taken when he sold the house he had shared with Dawn.

Behind the wavy handblown glass, his small collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century first editions seemed to be as he had left them. Below, on the writing surface, though, his few antiquities had been slightly rearranged. The time-rusted iron that had been the hilt of a Macedonian sword was now next to the Etruscan votive cup rather than the coin bearing the likeness of Augustus Caesar.

Someone had moved the objects to open the glass and look at the books. Or more likely to see if anything was concealed behind them.

Or to look through the bills aligned in the brass letter holder awaiting payment.

Five quick strides carried him into the remaining room of the small condo and in front of his bedside table. Easing its drawer open, he saw the SIG Sauer P226 was as he had left it, two extra clips loaded and right beside it.

It was one of the few things he had taken with him when the fall of the Evil Empire heralded a reduction of force across the intelligence community. The next generation would speak Arabic instead of Slavic languages and would do business in hot, dry places where scorpions were common.

Except for one potentially disastrous trip behind the Berlin Wall, Lang's duties had never taken him from his station in the grimy building across the street from the Frankfurt am Main Hauptbahnhof. He had been with the Third Directorate, intel, where he spent his days scanning newspapers from Iron Curtain countries and watching replays of government-sponsored talking heads reading the fiction that passed for news in the Marxist world.

Do not listen to the news broadcast from the imperialist. Western democracies, only that approved by the State; the life you save might be your own.

His one experience in real enemy territory had cured forever his resentment at having not been chosen for ops, Fourth Directorate, those romantic, James Bond swashbucklers of popular fiction. Truth was, they were nuts to take the chances they did.

Informational bureaucrat though he had been, he still took the weapon issued every new graduate of the Agency's training school in Virginia, the Farm.

He looked at it as he might have gazed on his high school letter jacket, a relic of a distant time… if he hadn't swapped the jacket in the backseat of a borrowed Ford for the purported chastity of…

Her name was lost to antiquity.

Other than requisite training, he had never even fired the weapon. Years after leaving the Agency, he had shot a man with the assailant's own gun, a matter of self- defense, and he had killed another, also to preserve his own life.

Ironically, neither was with the firearm he was given for the purpose.

Out of the Agency, he had applied for and been accepted to law school, viewing the profession as just one more form of the chicanery practiced by the Agency. Grateful he was separated from employment she considered dangerous no matter how many times he explained, Dawn had supported him until he graduated.

In spite of exemplary grades, he never considered working in one of the law factories. He went into practice on his own.

His shadowy government contacts steered a certain clientele his way: a Columbian importer who had helped the Agency but had been arrested for intent to distribute the cocaine surprisingly found in his coffee shipments, an officer of a foreign bank who had simply misunderstood U.S. Treasury reporting requirements by a few million dollars.

Not like it was real money, the man had explained in an interview the day of his acquittal due to the government's inability to locate a key witness. The same witness, Lang later learned, who had chosen the week of the trial to avail himself of the use of a yacht cruising the Greek Isles. Lang had no desire to know the name of the boat's owner.

His practice flourished, and he and Dawn hoped for a child until a tumor appeared on an X-ray, stabbing into her vital parts. The end was mercifully quick for her, devastating to him. Years later he never missed a holiday placement of roses on the grave on the hill under the big oak tree, a site that now included the rest of what family he had had.

Lang left the automatic in the drawer and turned to the laptop computer that sat on a small table next to the bed. He clicked it on and punched a series of keys. The last time it had been on was 9:27 the night before.

But he had been at Manuel's then.

A few more taps revealed that the password had withstood several attempts before the machine had shut down as programmed.

Frowning, he reached for a bedside phone. "Harvey, what time did you take Grumps out last night?"

Harvey, the building concierge, not only enjoyed making a few extra bucks walking or feeding Grumps in Lang's absence; he actually liked the dog.

"Dunno 'xactly, Mr. Reilly. He was full of piss 'n' ginger, so we went for a long 'un. Here to Peachtree Battle, Rivers Road, back to West Wesley. Maybe half an hour, maybe more. I do anything wrong?"

"No," Lang said. "Nothing. Just curious."

The route would have taken a half hour at least, more if Grumps had insisted on exploring every smell he encountered.

Lang sat down on the bed, listening to the crunch of dog food from the kitchen. Someone had tossed the place, no doubt about it. The method had been different but the purpose was the same as whoever had killed Lewis.

Or was it?

The destruction and disarray of the laboratory had been intended to look like a random invasion. What was it Morse had said? A junkie looking to feed a habit. Yet the missing hard drive and notebook pages belied the scenario the killer had wanted believed.

Lang's condominium had been searched by a professional, someone after something very specific. Someone who didn't intend Lang to know.

Or someone leaving something behind.

Standing, he crossed his condo back and forth, removing every switch plate and the cover for every electrical outlet.

He found it in the telephone's receiver. It was a device about the size of the battery for a hearing aid. Not only every word spoken on the phone would be transmitted, but every sound in the apartment as well. He suppressed his rage at the invasion of his personal space and his gut reaction to remove it. Instead he left it in place.

It might be useful.

Before he left, Lang took two hairs from his head. Licking his finger, he stuck the first one to the top of the knob on the door that let out onto the common hallway. The second he put on the underside. Both would fall off at the slightest touch. Any professional would expect the possibility that he had left a telltale and would replace it.

Not many would anticipate a second.