The Sinai Secret lr-4

by Gregg Loomis

  English: the language of Milton, Shakespeare, and the sex trade.

  Past the red-light district, they turned left past a number of university buildings to a small block of modest town houses. Beside one door a glass case displayed the names of residents next to a row of buttons. Louis pushed one, and a woman's voice replied in what Lang gathered was Dutch.

  Minutes later Lang and Louis were at the door of a third-floor walk-up. The woman looked like she was in her mid-fifties, white hair tucked into a no-nonsense bun at the back of her neck. Her eyes were bottomless black pools under unplucked eyebrows. She was small, probably less than a hundred pounds, and under five feet.

  Lang felt he was holding a thinly wrapped bundle of sticks when he shook her hand at the threshold. "We came to express our regrets, Mrs. Yadish."

  She gave him the look of someone tired of social banalities. "Mary, please. I had just returned from saying kaddish for my husband when Louis called from the station," she said in English, ushering them into the living room. "I fear I have not had time to properly clean up or prepare refreshment."

  Although worn, the room looked immaculate to Lang. "Thanks, but we ate on the train," he lied. "As I said, Mary, I wanted to personally tell you how sorry I and the foundation are. I also wanted to ask a few questions."

  She collapsed, rather than sat, into a stuffed chair upholstered in a cabbage-rose print, the sort of pattern Lang saw in films set in World War II England.

  Lang and Louis sat on a sofa so uncomfortable it seemed to have been stuffed with concrete.

  She looked at him wearily. "Questions? The police have been here no less than three times with questions?"

  Lang almost bolted back to his feet. "The police have been here three times?"

  She looked at him quizzically, clearly suspecting she might have said something wrong. "Three times, yes. First by an older man, an inspector, then twice more by a younger man."

  "Did either of them give you his business card?"

  Now she looked as though he might be deranged. "Yes, of course." She turned to a small side table and produced two cards. "The Inspector was a Van Decker. The other man's name, as you can see, is Hooy."

  "The younger man, can you describe him?"

  Now Louis was puzzled.

  Mary Yadish was staring at the faded Oriental rug. "I suppose so. Large, perhaps over two meters tall. Dark hair cut close. Mid-thirties."

  "Did he ask anything different than the first one, Van Decker?"

  She lifted her eyes, to regard Lang for a moment. "Yes, yes, he did. He acted as though my husband must have left something other than the CD on which he recorded his research, the one he must have taken with him when he went to Bruges, some sort of records. It was almost as though he knew it."

  "Did your husband leave other notes or the like?"

  She shook her head slowly. "Benjamin left only his books and his clothes. He had no interest in owning things." She looked back at Lang quickly. "Although your foundation paid him generously."

  "Did your husband have any friends, know anyone in Bruges?"

  She shook her head again, weary of the repetition. "No one. As I told the police, he went there because he thought he was meeting you."

  Was that a tone of accusation?

  "How was he contacted?"

  She looked at him blankly.

  Lang leaned forward. "You said your husband thought he was meeting me. How did he get that information? Did someone telephone him?"

  She shook her head for a third time. "I… I do not know. He simply said he had to meet you in Bruges. Two days later…"

  Lang could not find a tactful way to ask the next question. "Do you mind if I take a look through his things? There might possibly be something there…"

  She stood. "The police searched the closet and the room he used as a study. They found nothing. I have already bundled his clothes to give away, but you are welcome to look. While you do I will make tea."

  The clothes were in stacks of suits, shirts, and shoes, surprisingly few of each for what Yadish had been paid. Jacket and pants pockets were turned out, no doubt the result of the previous examination.

  After a few moments Lang stood. "Nothing," he said to Louis.

  Mary entered the room carrying a small tray. "Tea?"

  Lang accepted a cup for courtesy's sake. The brew had a faint aroma of fruit. Cup in hand, he was led to a small room that struggled to contain a diminutive table and a straight-backed wooden chair. The table's surface was barely large enough to hold a laptop computer, telephone, lamp, and what looked like an antique radio. One wall, perhaps eight feet long, was lined with books.

  It took Lang a single step to get a closer look at the radio, an American-made Philco with volume and tuning knobs and a numbered dial face. He remembered as a child seeing one like it at the home of an elderly relative.

  "Benjamin liked to repair them," Mary said from the doorway. "Old radios. He had to make the vacuum tubes himself."

  Lang turned the radio around, noting the bulbous tubes and wiring. "Made the tubes? Your husband Was a chemist."

  She shrugged. "He liked to play with antique electronics. The disassembled remains of a Victrola are in a closet, if you would like to see."

  Lang found space enough to put his teacup on the table and turned his attention to the books. The titles were mostly in Dutch, with a few spines showing Hebrew characters.

  Mary Yadish backed out of the doorway, making room for Louis. "Mostly histories, particularly ancient history. Another hobby. Take your time."

  "One other question," Lang said. "Was your husband a religious man? That is, did he follow the Jewish dietary laws?"

  A faint smile flickered across her face. "Benjamin was Jewish by birth only. I doubt he had been in a synagogue since he was a child." She sighed deeply. "In fact, today was the first time in years that I have been."

  So much for proscribed shellfish.

  Lang and Louis began to patiently examine each book, thumbing its pages before returning each to its place on the shelf.

  Louis blew gently across the cover of one, sending dust spinning into the air like planets in a tiny universe. "What are we looking for?"

  Lang was exchanging one tome for another that had illustrations of some sort of metallurgical process. "I'm not sure, but if the good professor kept any sort of records besides the electronic ones, this would sure be a good place."

  Louis took a handkerchief from a pocket and wiped his hands. "Why would Yadish want to hide his research notes and records?"

  "I'm not sure he would, but if he kept an extra set, maybe some handwritten notes, the library would be logical."

  On impulse, Lang reached for the radio. He was curious to see if it worked. He turned the volume knob, half expecting to hear something from the era before television, a dialogue between Jack Benny and Rochester, or "Thanks for the Memories," Bob Hope's theme song.

  Instead there was a mechanical click, and the face of the dial swung open.

  Louis reshelved a book and came over to join Lang in peering into the radio's plastic case. Lang reached his thumb and forefinger in, removing a sheaf of papers rolled with a rubber band. He carefully slid the band off. He was looking at perhaps twenty or so pages in what looked like Hebrew characters.

  "From his cousin Joseph in Vienna," Mary commented from the doorway. "He was killed in a motor accident not long ago."

  "So he kept papers hidden in a radio?" Lang asked, truly puzzled.

  "Benjamin and Joseph were very close. Benjamin went to Vienna for a service for Joseph. Just before he died Joseph mailed those papers to Benjamin, some sort of research he was going to publish. Benjamin checked his cousin's home computer. He never accepted that the accident was that-accidental. The police never found the other vehicle or driver. My husband half believed his cousin was killed for what was on those papers."

  Lang put the pages down. "From where did Dr. Yadish's cousin send them?"

  She shook her
head. "The postmark said Durnstein." She thought a moment. "It may be nothing, but we never knew. His laptop was missing from the wreckage, but his wife said he left with it that morning."

  "Obviously your husband thought these were important."

  She shrugged. "We did not know. Neither of us read Hebrew, but Benjamin said he thought they were related to some project he was working on, perhaps the one for you."

  Interesting but less than helpful, Lang thought. But if

  Yadish thought he needed to hide them, perhaps the papers had some answers concerning his death. Lang knew someone as proficient in Hebrew as he and Francis were in Latin. "May I borrow it long enough to make a copy?"

  She shrugged, a gesture more of surrender than assent. "It could not hurt."

  "One more thing and we'll leave you alone," Lang began.

  "No hurry," she said slowly. "I will be alone for a very long time now."

  Lang was unsure how to reply, so he said, "I'd also like a look at your husband's laboratory."

  She pointed at Louis. "He can take you there. It's only a few blocks away. But you must arrive before the university locks the building for the night."

  As soon as he and Lang were back on the street, Louis stopped. "Vorstaat said the woman had been visited only once by the police. That is why you asked her so closely about the second policeman, Hooy, rather than Inspector Van Decker, no?"

  "Yes," Lang said, thinking about the faux FBI man, Witherspoon. Mrs. Yadish's description fit him, too. He tried to dismiss the notion as illogical. How many millions of men in their mid-thirties were over six feet with dark hair? But the idea wouldn't go away. It continued to circle his mind like a stray dog seeking a handout.

  FIFTEEN

  Five Minutes Later

  Louis was saying something.

  "Pardon?"

  The Belgian pointed to a shop with a copy machine visible through the plate-glass window. "We can make a Xerox there."

  Lang turned and stopped. Was it his imagination or had the corner of his eye caught the reflection of someone whirling at exactly the same time to study a handbill posted on a stand? The man was certainly there, and he certainly wasn't the size of Witherspoon. He wore a leather jacket open, with nondescript slacks and black socks under the sandals so loved by Europeans.

  Lang handed the rerolled pages to Louis. "Please, if you don't mind, make us two copies of each page."

  Louis looked at him questioningly before ducking inside.

  Lang studied the surrounding architecture, the boats along the adjacent canal, marijuana plants growing in pots in a coffeehouse window. But mostly he studied the man in the jacket, who seemed as intent on wasting time as did Lang.

  Police? Perhaps, but law enforcement officers would be unlikely to waste resources following him when all they had to do was stop him and ask questions. There was a chance, slim as it might be, that Leather Jacket was simply early for an appointment of some kind.

  The coincidence that a stranger would suddenly appear idling at exactly the same spot where Lang and Louis were was unbelievable. There were also the coincidences of two bogus cops, and that both the murder victims had been working on the fringes of the same project.

  Agency training had included extreme skepticism of mere happenstance. If you refused to accept similarities as flukes, you might be wrong ten percent of the time. Conversely, accepting coincidence at face value was frequently fatal.

  Then there was the question of those shots fired in Underground Atlanta. He had been certain they had been a warning. If the shooter had wanted him dead, Lang wouldn't be here right now. Yet the guys who had hijacked him at the Brussels airport weren't out to just warn him.

  What was the connection?

  Louis emerged from the shop with a bulging paper bag in each hand. He handed one to Lang. "The laboratory is just ahead."

  Leather Jacket was still inspecting a window as they left.

  "This is the Oost-Indisch Huis," Louis proclaimed, pointing to an attractive seventeenth-century brick-and-concrete building. "It was the offices of the Dutch East India Company. Now it belongs to the university. You have heard of the Dutch East India Company, yes?"

  Lang was not so much interested in one of the world's most outrageously successful commercial enterprises as he was in making sure they weren't followed. "Yes."

  Louis stopped before an ornate entranceway, waiting for Lang to catch up. Both men entered what looked from the street to be a series of buildings between two tree-lined canals with a block-long bicycle rack in front. As Lang soon discovered, he was in one of many passageways linking a large number of structures.

  They passed through a courtyard, an outdoor cafe filled with students. One, a large blonde, followed him with blue eyes. Once again Gurt rose as a specter, this time dressed in motorcycle leathers, the same ones she had worn when she saved his life in Italy, her long blond hair flowing around her face. Two women, Dawn and Gurt: one his wife, one he wished had been. Both gone from his life.

  He shook his head as though he could scatter the memories.

  "Mr. Reilly?"

  Louis was standing outside a door with Yadish's name etched on the glass pane.

  Louis fumbled in his pockets and produced a ring of keys. He tried one. The click of a dead bolt signaled that he had found the right one, and he pushed the door open, ushering Lang inside. The room resembled the lab in Atlanta, except it was slightly smaller, and racks of test tubes and beakers flanking Bunsen burners occupied two long counters, instead of electronic equipment. Another difference was that this room looked as though Yadish might return at any moment.

  At the end of one counter, in front of a long-legged stool on casters, was a cloth-bound ledger, the sort of thing Lang would have expected to see in any company's accounting department before computers made paper all but obsolete. From where he stood Lang could see that a number of pages had been torn out.

  Thumbing through the pages, he asked, "Did Dr. Yadish keep notes here as well as electronically?"

  Louis was standing in front of a computer on the other counter. "I do not know."

  Lang left the book where it was to look over Louis's shoulder as the computer hummed to life. "The ledger is a journal of sorts. I can't read the language, but the last date's less than a week ago."

  Louis left the machine to boot up and viewed the open pages. "A list of purchases-nitrate of mercury, two hundred milligrams, sodium phosphate, and so on. I would suppose he kept an account of the chemicals he used."

  Both men returned to the blank blue screen.

  Louis tapped a series of keys and frowned. "Nothing."

  Lang could see that. "Did the professor have a password, perhaps?"

  Louis was still pecking away. "He may have, but we are getting nothing. It is as if the hard drive is blank."

  Or gone or erased.

  "Did he have any special place to put things, a particular drawer, a file cabinet?"

  Louis nodded and pulled the stool behind him as he went to the far wall, where a row of cabinets crowned two industrial sinks. "Steady me, please?"

  Lang held the stool as the Belgian climbed up to kneel on its seat. He opened the cabinets to reveal rows of labeled opaque jars. He moved one or two before asking Lang to push him farther to his left.

  "Eureka," he said with a smile, removing a container in each hand.

  Behind the row of vessels Lang could see the black face of a safe built into the wall. "Swell. I don't suppose you know the combination?"

  Louis's grin widened. "No need." He handed Lang several of the containers to put aside. He held one up, however, rotating it so Lang could see a series of four numbers on the back. "Dr. Yadish could never remember, so he wrote it down. I saw him take this down to open the safe."

  Thirty seconds later the door swung open. From below the cabinet where Lang stood he could see nothing in it.

  "Why keep an empty safe?" he asked rhetorically.

  "Not empty." Louis reached into the
safe and held up two letter-sized envelopes.

  He handed them to Lang and climbed off the stool. Lang opened the first. Inside was a grainy white powder similar to the traces streaked across the counter in Dr. Lewis's lab. The second contained the same.

  Lang wondered if Detective Morse had gotten the test results back from the state crime lab yet. If only the stuff hadn't vanished in the APD's property room, the evidence locker that seemed to have a leak bigger than the Titanic's.

  He'd call Morse as soon as-

  He heard the door behind him shut.

  "I'll take that, Mr. Reilly."

  Lang turned slowly. Leather Jacket and another man stood just inside the door. Each held an automatic obscured by a silencer.

  He heard Louis's surprised intake of air, something between a gasp and a grunt.

  Lang mentally kicked himself. He had fallen for one of the hoarier surveillance tactics. Leather Jacket had had every intention of being spotted, of keeping Lang's attention, so that when he failed to follow Lang and Louis from the copy shop, Lang wouldn't notice a second tail.

  Shit.

  The two men were a good five feet apart. No chance Lang could draw the SIG Sauer from its holster and fire before at least one of the intruders could shoot.

  Lang slowly raised his hands, his fingers manipulating the envelopes so that one was squarely behind the other. "What can I do for you gentlemen?"

  Leather Jacket motioned with his weapon. "The envelope you have in your hand, Mr. Reilly, put it on the counter and slide it toward me."

  There was a trace of an accent Lang couldn't identify.

  As Lang slowly lowered the hand with the packets in it, he turned his profile slightly so the hand was briefly hidden from the intruders. He let one envelope drop into a jacket pocket. He hoped the widening of Louis's eyes didn't give the sleight of hand away.

  The question was whether these two intended to take what they had come for and leave, or if the plan included making sure Lang did not trouble them further. The silencers on each gun did not suggest a happy ending. It was unlikely a man would risk carrying something that bulky if he had no intent of using it.