The Julian Secret

by Gregg Loomis

  Lang shifted in his chair, uncertain how long he could hold the cup in his hands. "The book-what was it about?"

  "Some Nazi. His name sounded Polish or something, not German. After the war he, the Nazi, wound up in

  Spain. Dad came here to do research."

  Lang glanced at Gurt. She was no help. World War II was something intentionally slipping from the German national memory. She would have been more helpful with the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

  Her people won that one.

  "But who ... ?" Lang began.

  "Some group of Nazis," Jessica explained. "People who don't want that book published."

  Lang finally got up and placed his half-empty cup on a small oak chest with brass edges. He spoke as he returned to his seat. "Jessica, anyone who fought in that war would be nearly or over eighty. I can't see someone that age killing anyone."

  "I'm not suggesting they did it personally. Eighty years old or not, no one wants to go to jail. How often do you read in the papers that some retire«

  autoworker is being shipped back to Eastern Europe to stand trial for war crimes or an old man living on a beach in Florida was actually a concentration-camp guard?"

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  Lang had to admit she was right. Old or not, no former Nazi was going to prison if he could avoid it.

  She continued. "I read about a secret Organization of SS officers," she said almost crossly. "They didn't hesitate to kill when it suited them."

  "Odessa, in popular fiction of a few years back. It was fiction."

  "The name was, er, fiction," Gurt said, breaking her silence, "but the group was real. Die Spinne, the spider. I remember my father of it talking. The Communists wanted such organizations destroyed as much as did the Americans. It was one of the few areas of cooperation."

  Jessica was showing an interest in Gurt. "Your father?"

  "He was in the East German government," Gurt said, as if that explained everything. Lang stood again. "I have no idea what I'm looking for, Jessica, but I'd like to see the room where ..." She also stood and headed for a staircase.

  "Daddy used one of the upstairs rooms."

  Lang hated talking to the back of someone's head, so he saved further questions until he, Jessica, and Gurt were on a gallery above the first floor. "Who knew about the book?"

  Jessica shrugged. "Everybody, I guess. I mean, he hassled his old buddies for a chance to see the files of the old OSS. That was what the Agency was called during the war, Office of Strategic Services. I know he already had a literary agent, and I think she was negotiating with a publisher. The book wasn't a secret. Other than research in Spain and that it was about some Nazi, I didn't really know much about it." She stopped and opened a door. "This is it."

  Lang walked into a room equipped as an office might be: two desks, two computers, each with a printer. Government-issue bookshelves, gray metal, lined one wall filled with stacks of papers, books, and a dinner plate with a thriving colony' of mold.

  ''You and Sonia have cleaned up?" Lang wanted to know.

  "That's what I was doing while Sonia went to the airport." She nodded to the increasing green on the plate. "As you can see, I haven't finished. That's why I booked you into a hotel. Sonia won't come in here. She's the one who found Daddy when she came to work the day before yesterday. He was lying right here," she pointed, "partially blocking the door."

  Lang took a closer look around the room. "If he was blocking the door, how ... ?"

  "The room adjoins another," Jessica said. "In fact, almost all of the bedrooms in the house adjoin each other. It used to be a method of ventilation."

  And assignations, Lang thought but did not say. Don Juan's largely boastful memoirs were full of adjoining bedchambers. "Did the police check the other rooms?"

  "I-I guess so. You'll have to ask Sonia. I didn't get here until yesterday. I called you before I left. Anyway, Sonia was here when the police inspected the place."

  Gurt had been poking through the stacks of papers. She held up several.

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  "These are research notes all. Does anyone have the manu, manu ..."

  "Manuscript," Lang finished.

  "Does anyone have a copy of the whole manuscript?"

  Jessica shook her head. "According to Sonia, there was only one complete copy, but it is missing along with the computer's hard drive."

  So much for the theory Don Huff was killed for something other than the manuscript.

  "And this?" Gurt was holding up a small metal filing box full of index cards, a device that reminded Lang of how he wrote term papers in the age before computers.

  Jessica shrugged again. "I don't know. I hadn't seen Dad in over two years, had no idea even how he was going about his writing."

  Lang took the box from Gurt. Each card had a single name, address, and what Lang gathered to be phone numbers at the top. Under that were one or two words in what looked like German. The rest of the card had handwritten dates, some as recent as two weeks ago.

  Lang handed it back to Gurt. "What do you make out of the cards?"

  She flipped through slowly. "It is a list of subject matter and people. For instance, here is someone with a reference to the Nuremberg Trials, another with reference to a parachute jump over Crete."

  "What does that all have in common?" Lang asked.

  No one had an answer.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Hotel Alphonso XIII

  17:30 (the same day)

  A call to the police station from Don Huff's house had informed Lang that Inspector Pedro Mendezo, the investigating officer, observed the usual siesta and would return to duty around 18:00, six o'clock. With nothing better to do and the shops shuttered for the next four hours, Gurt and Lang had returned to the hotel. Before succumbing to jet lag, they had made love, a wild and noisy affair that Lang suspected could be heard all the way down the sumptuous hall.

  Neither cared.

  Refreshed and sated, they awoke famished.

  "Should I telephone the room servicers?" Gurt asked.

  "Room service. No, let's go out," Lang called back from a shower that far exceeded those in most European hotels. This one allowed the bather to actually stand rather than squat in a tub while using a flexible hose with a nozzle at one end. The normal arrangement reminded him of the German word for shower, Dusche. Stepping out of the shower, he helped himself to a luxurious robe and walked into the other room, where Gurt was lighting her first cigarette of the

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  day.

  "Do you have to?" he asked.

  "You smoke cigars," she replied, shaking out a match.

  "Once or twice a month, maybe."

  "So your cigars are five or six times larger than my cigarettes. I smoke one, two cigarettes a day-it is the same, yes?"

  There was a logic error there somewhere, but Lang wasn't sure where. At least he had gotten her habit down from over a pack a day. If she didn't quit, she wasn't going to be around long enough to become the next Mrs. Lang Reilly. So far, though, he had had little luck in persuading her into marriage. Instead, she seemed perfectly content, pointing out that their relationship worked just fine as is. He had had no success in finding the logic error there, either.

  Minutes later, they were getting out of a taxi in front of a building with the unmistakable facade common to 1930s-era dictators, a style of architecture Lang referred to as Fascist Modern. After they passed through metal detectors found in public buildings worldwide, a uniformed officer directed them to the office of Inspector Mendezo.

  Blinds against the still-fierce afternoon sun created an artificial twilight. Silhouetted by a dim lamp, a thin figure rose to extend a hand and a "Buenos dias." A chink in the blinds behind him allowed sunlight into the two visitor's chairs in front of the desk, an arrangement that made it difficult to see the face of whoever was behind the desk, a setup Lang was certain was intentional.

  In Spain, manners required the usual prefatory discussion of the weather, Lang and Gurt's
accommodations, their impressions of Seville, and the inspector's recommendations as to local restaurants, a suggestion that was amended when he learned of their arrival by private plane. Lang guessed his potential dinner tab had doubled.

  Preliminaries out of the way, the inspector produced a pack of cigarettes and looked at Gurt. She nodded, producing a pack of her own. Lang, unable to say a word, prepared for a double volume of secondhand smoke.

  Or double lungful.

  The inspector leaned across the desk with a gallant flourish to light Gurt's smoke with a lighter encased in gold. Pushing a cheap glass ashtray across the desk, he asked in heavily accented English, "So how may I help you?"

  Although he couldn't see the face because of the light in his eyes, Lang would have bet the policeman was giving Gurt an appraising stare. "The Huff murder," Lang said. "His daughter asked us to look into it."

  "Hmmph!" Lang could not tell if the snort was derisive or angry. Americans. They see too many detective programs on the televisions, believe every crime can be solved in sixty minutes with time for advertising. Even in your country, I think crime is not solved that quickly."

  "Of course not," Lang said, "but the woman, Miss Huff, is emotional and cannot understand the diligent efforts you and your department are making. If you would be so gracious as to explain them to me so I may comfort the

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  unmarried daughter of an old friend ..."

  "Diligent?"

  "Working very hard," Gurt supplied, flicking an ash into the tray. Lang made a mental note to keep the language simple. It was difficult enough to carry on a conversation in a tongue not native to all participants. Employing unusual words would only alienate the Spaniard.

  "We are working hard," the Inspector said. ''You see, here in Seville, or all of Spain, for that matter, we have less murder than in, say, your New York. Almost always a hombre .. ."

  "Man," Gurt supplied.

  ". . . man killed, it is because he and a friend get drink. A woman, gamble, you know? Narcotics also. Sometime, not many, a ... man, he bust into house to take, steal, get caught, he kill to get away. Here, Mr. Huff, look like only papers get stealed, yes? Very difficult, this thing, this killing. It was ... How you say?

  Like your gangsters."

  "Execution?" Lang offered. ''Yes, execution. Bullet to the back of the neck, powder burns on skin. Very intentional."

  "Do you have any idea why someone would kill Huff to get his manu ... his book?" Lang asked.

  "I never see before in twenty years," the inspector answered. "To kill for a book ... ? It is not thinkable. I tell you, Senor, Mr. Reilly, we will not quit until we find man who do it."

  The inspector stood, indicating the interview was over. He had demonstrated a talent for packing a maximum number of words into a minimum of information.

  Lang remained seated, indicating he was not quite through. "Could we see the papers you took from the house?"

  "Ho-kay." The policeman handed a cardboard box across the desk. "If they tell you anything, you call?"

  "Sure."

  "Ah, I forget." The inspector handed Lang an envelope. "CD. Only one has anything on it, pictures, old pictures, maybe sixty years old."

  As Lang and Gurt reached the door, Mendezo said, "One more thing" Mr. Reilly."

  Lang turned. ''Yes?''

  "Any assistance you give your friend's daughter is kindness. Interfering with professional police investigation is something else. You will please leave that job to us."

  Lang nodded. "Of course, Inspector. Thank you for your time."

  "Amateurs," he muttered to Gurt as they stepped outside the building,

  "constructed the ark. It was the professionals who built the Titanic."

  Once back in the old section of town, Gurt led Lang to one of the tapas bars that seemed to occupy every corner. Since the average Spaniard ate dinner after 10:30, the small appetizers at least abated the hunger pangs. From what

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  Lang could see, a couple or a group would enter one of the places, or sit outside if seats were available, have a glass of beer or the sweet, spicy sangria along with two or three tapas, and move along to an identical establishment a few blocks away where they greeted other people.

  In the third tapas bar, he noted a pair of men who had been in the other two.

  He could feel the old familiar tingling at the back of his neck, the sensation he had whenever danger was close.

  He leaned across the small table, using the excuse of refilling Gurt's glass of sangria to get close enough to speak in a whisper. "Did you notice those two guys who came in right behind us?"

  He knew she was too well trained to turn around. ''You mean the two that have been in each place we have?"

  He smiled as though acknowledging a clever remark, no more than conversation between a man and a woman to any observer. "When did you first pick them up?"

  She was rummaging around in the huge purse she carried, one large enough to contain a complete change of clothes for several days. "When we got out of the cab, they from a car got. Everywhere they looked but at us."

  She had recognized what they were doing a good thirty minutes before he had. But then, she was still in the spook business. "Why didn't you tell me?"

  She retrieved a pack of cigarettes and began further exploration for matches. ''You did not notice them until now? You are losing your corner."

  "Edge," he corrected tartly. "I'm a lawyer now, not an operative." She found a book of matches and struck one. "You do not have to be sharp to be a lawyer?"

  He filled his own glass, using his hand across the spout of the pitcher to keep the assorted fruit from splattering onto the table. This conversation was going nowhere. And why, do you suppose, are we being followed?"

  She shrugged. "We do not know certainly that we are. There are at least three other couples in this place that were in the first one we went to."

  Lang was not about to admit this was a revelation. Instead, he drained his glass. "We'll soon find out. You know how. Go straight back to the hotel."

  Gurt let smoke trickle from her lips. No matter how much Lang wanted her to quit, he found this sexy. "Why do not you go back to the hotel? It is you, not I, who is years removed from recurrent Agency training. I resent being treated as though I cannot take care of myself."

  "Tell it to Dr. Phil. You will go back to the hotel." If there was one thing a German understood, it was the difference between a request and an order.

  He stood, counting out euros, which he tossed on the table. He and, Gurt sauntered outside, each taking turns pointing at a number of sights, two tourists discovering one of Europe's more interesting. old cities. Suddenly, gestures became angry, voices lowered to keep them from passersby. Tourists had become combatants.

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  Then they split, each stalking angrily away from the other. The two men, just exiting the tapas bar, exchanged glances. One followed Lang, the other Gurt.

  There was now no doubt.

  Lang slowed his pace, the gait of a man perhaps regretting what he had done. A couple of uncertain glances in the direction in which Gurt had departed told him his follower was keeping a consistent distance, not the move of someone intent on a street mugging —or picking a pocket, two common crimes in an area with twenty-five percent unemployment.

  Shadows were growing longer. Lang estimated it would be dark in less than a half hour. If there were more of whoever these people were, Lang would prefer to be able to see them.

  He studied the flyspecked window of an apparel shop for a few minutes before stepping inside. Clothes, men's suits, ladies' coats, shoes, were dumped in random piles so close together there was little room between them. Lang idly edged between a mountain of cheap cloth handbags and brightly colored sweaters to examine a man's faux-fur overcoat. Why someone would want such a heavy garment in the south of Spain escaped him, but the price was right. Pretending to seek the proprietor, he confirmed that his minder had entered the shop.
<
br />   Casually, Lang made his way to the rear, brushing aside a curtain that divided the store's public space from the owner's. Dropping the coat, he quickly stepped to the back of the building, gratified to see a door. The dead bolt turned easily, and Lang stood in a narrow alley lined with the rears of buildings.

  He waited patiently. Inside, he heard angry voices, no doubt the shopkeeper protesting the invasion of private space by the man following Lang.

  Lang moved to the side against which the door would open. For at least a split second, it— would shield him from anyone exiting. He thought of the Sig Sauer, useless in his bedside table an ocean away.