The Julian Secret

by Gregg Loomis

  Lang followed the Ausgehensigns, his assumption that they meant "exit" buttressed by pictures of a bus and a cab. He stepped outside seconds before a line of police took up position just inside the glass doors. He turned a corner and, seeing no one, peeled off the coveralls, wadded them up, and looked for a place to dump them. He didn't have far to look; Germans, it seemed, loved public trash baskets, placing one every few meters rather than risk the horror of litter. He stuffed the clothes in, covered them with newspaper pages, and walked to a taxi stand.

  He had always planned on returning to Frankfurt, but he had anticipated a more conventional arrival.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Frankfurt Am Main

  Dusseldorf Am HauptbahnhofStrasse

  An hour and a half later

  At mid-afternoon, the bierstubewas -filled more with the smell of cooked sausages and sauerkraut than with people. The sole waiter was fussing with tablecloths and napkins. The only other customers were an elderly couple whose fragile appearance was belied by the meal they were finishing: roast pork, red cabbage, and dumplings. Lang was the only other person in the single room.

  Gazing out of the plate-glass window to the building in which he had spent so much of his time with the Agency, he wondered how the square could be so clean and yet appear so grubby. After all, the HauptbahnhofPlatz had been subjected to extreme urban replanning by the U.S. Army and Royal Air Forces and totally rebuilt only sixty years ago. Yet the indelible smudges of coal-burning trains seemed to have been there for centuries. Frankfurt was a city of

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  commerce, banking, and other financial services, not beauty, although the rebuilt Romerberg, the medieval center of town, had a certain charm.

  He sipped at the dregs of a beer, still tasting the sharp brown mustard with which he had coated his bratwurst. He had just put down his glass when Gurt came through the door, wheeling her suitcase behind her.

  She glanced around the room an instant longer than it took to see him before she sat across the table. Lang stood, leaned across, and kissed her cheek.

  "I was beginning to worry."

  She rolled— her eyes. "Worry? You? You downshut the airport. I had to wait an hour before the U-Bahn began to run again."

  Lang eased back into his chair. "I did what?"

  "Robbing a man at gunpoint, then hitting a policeman and taking his gun. You managed to wreck four police cars, too."

  Lang was uncertain if what he detected in her voice was admiration or the atavistic Teutonic horror of disorder. "Me? What makes you think I had anything to do with it?"

  A snort told him she did not consider the question worthy of an answer."After waiting an hour, you can imagine how crowded the train from the airport was."

  As though imposing a penance, she drained the remainder of his beer.

  ''You could have taken a cab," he suggested helpfully.

  Another snort, this one of frustration, as she gave the empty glass a look of regret and set it down. "The length, er, line, er, queue for cabs was forever. I have hunger. Can we eat rather than discuss the problems you caused?"

  Gurt signaled to the waiter, who was already openly staring at her. In mere blue jeans and nondescript blouse and jacket, she could have stopped traffic. He appeared at their tableside with considerably more speed than Lang had seen him move before.

  "Tageskart, menu?"

  Lang knew there are few things, including War and Peace, thicker than the organized listing of daily specials for both lunch and dinner, as well the standard dishes, each arranged as to appetizers, soups, main courses, and desserts, that is a German Tageskart. He often wondered if the war would have turned out differently if the Germans had spent as much time fighting as they had reading menus.

  Like most of her countrymen, Gurt perused the pages with the care of an investor checking the closing market reports before ordering exactly what Lang knew she would, the bratwurst.

  They waited until the waiter disappeared behind the curtain that screened the kitchen from the dining area before Gurt repeated his question. "How did I know it was you that turned the airport up downside? Maybe a lucky guess. More likely because you left your suitcase with your name tag on it."

  Lang winced at the breach of the protocol he knew so well. One does not put the standard name tag on baggage. Such markers decrease considerably the

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  deniability of having been somewhere. Additionally, personal baggage of Agency personnel frequently contained items like a totally plastic, X-ray-proof pistol, component parts of bombs, and other things likely to be frowned upon by officialdom. Identifying the person possessing such things could lead to unnecessary difficulty. He had put the tag on for a brief trip on behalf of the foundation when the Gulfstream had been in the shop for its hundred-hour inspection.

  Not only did the damned thing have his name, it had

  his address. The German cops were probably already in touch with American authorities.

  Swell.

  Gurt looked lovingly at the tall glass of beer the waiter sat before her. "Of course, I reported the suitcase stolen."

  "Thanks. I didn't have time to."

  Gurt took a tentative sip from her glass, closed her eyes, and sighed in delight. "That beer makes you happier than sex." Lang chuckled. "I do not have to depend on you for the beer," she retorted. ''And you can enjoy it even when you have a headache." She put the glass down. "I never have those kind of headaches."

  True.

  Lang became serious. "Think they believed you?"

  "About the beer or the sex?"

  He shook his head. "About the baggage being stolen."

  She shrugged. "Who knows? I do think it might be wise to cross the Platz there and see if we could get a favor from some friends of mine, see what they might be able to do with the local police."

  Very little, in Lang's experience. Germans, like any other nationality, did not accept being an American agent as an excuse for creating bedlam on their soil.

  "I suppose they could at least find out if they bought your story."

  Thirty minutes later, Gurt and Lang crossed Mosel Strasse to an unimposing four-story stone building. Wet with the continuing drizzle, the rock face seemed somehow ominous, like the facade of a prison. Both Gurt and Lang knew that, as they approached, they were appearing on a series of surveillance cameras concealed in the stone work and behind the small, tinted windows made of explosive-proof plastic, reinforced sufficiently to withstand any projectile smaller than an artillery shell. Well out of sight from below, the roof sprouted a forest of antennae. The venetian blinds on the windows were rubber-lined. When drawn, they prevented window-glass vibrations that, scanned by laser or other listening devices, could betray conversations inside.

  The door onto the Platz, also reenforced and explosive-proof, opened onto

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  a small foyer. On one wall was listed the American Trade Attaché and a number of businesses, none of which ever had a customer visit because the companies did not exist. The foyer opened onto another room that housed a counterlike desk manned by a white-haired man in the uniform of a private security company. Had he looked behind the desk, Lang knew he would have seen a shotgun in a rack, a television monitor, and an alarm button on the floor. The wall behind the desk was mirrored with one-way glass, behind which were men in full combat gear.

  The guard gave Gurt and Lang a smile that was perfunctory. only. "Help you, sir, madam?"

  From the lack of accent, he was American, not German.

  "Good afternoon to you, too, Allie," Gurt said, holding up a laminated card for him to see. "Nice to have you back, Ms. Fuchs." Gurt gave him a smile. "Is Eddie Reavers in?" Lang remembered the name, if not the face. Reavers

  had, like him, been in the Intel section, although he had begun in Ops. One of the few agents to survive capture by the Russians, he had spent two years in Lubyanka prison, the KGB's own very special hellhole, before being swapped for a Soviet spy. He had returne
d a hero. Lang was surprised the man had not retired by now.

  The guard looked down, checking what Lang knew was a list of anyone expected that day. "Don't see as you have an appointment."

  Gurt's smile radiated sexuality. "We-I don't. Just tell him I'm in town with a friend and I'd like a couple of minutes of his time."

  The guard gave her an uncertain look before picking up a phone and mumbling into it.

  Hanging up, he reached under the desk and produced two laminated visitor's passes. "Clip these on and go on in." He pointed to her suitcase. " 'Cept that bag. You'll have to leave it here."

  Gurt was still holding her own Agency identification. She put it into her purse and took the one being proffered.

  Gurt approached the desk, clearly well-versed in the drill. Extending both arms, she placed the thumb of each hand on a screen that was part of the top of the desk.

  The door to the left of the desk wheezed open, and Gurt and Lang entered a small room. One person could not carry enough explosives to blast through the concrete-and-steel reinforcement of this antechamber. Two men in fatigues without insignia and a large Labrador retriever were waiting for them. As the dog sniffed, one man ran a metal detector over their bodies while the second kept them covered with an M16A2 assault rifle.

  The detector squeaked at Lang's belt line, and he grinned sheepishly.

  "Sorry. Forgot."

  He lifted his jacket to allow the man without the rifle to pull the airport policeman's weapon free. For the first time, he noted it was a Glock 9mm.

  The man held the gun up, suspicious. ''Anything else slip your mind, like

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  maybe a stick or two of dynamite?"

  Gurt gave the guard a glare that could well have singed the paint on the walls. "Perhaps you forget he is with me?"

  Both men were instantly apologetic.

  "Sorry, Ms. Fuchs."

  "Just following orders, Ms. Fuchs."

  If Lang remembered correctly, the latter excuse had not played well at Nuremberg. But he said, "It's okay, fellas. You're doing ,your job. Just be sure that's here when I come back."

  Lang and Gurt stepped onto an elevator that had no buttons for floor selection. It was controlled from somewhere outside. The hallway into which they stepped looked pretty much the same as Lang recalled it: gray commercialgrade carpet that he would expect in a thirty-dollar-a-night hotel room, institutional pale-green walls. The same taste with which U.s. government offices worldwide were decorated. Lang suspected that, buried somewhere in the General Services Administration, there was a grandmotherly lady who furnished such places, a lady who was color-blind, found oatmeal too spicy, and lived at yard sales.

  Painted metal doors were closed but could not entirely absorb the hum of machinery. The one at the end of the hall opened.

  "Ahhope to hell you've come home," a soft voice drawled.

  The accent was southern? No, western. Lang put the name with the face, aided by the voice. Eddie "Lone Star" Reavers. He had been near optional retirement age when Lang had left. He must be in his seventies by now. The man had reveled in his Texas origin, keeping the dialect and mannerisms of West Texas years after he had left it for the last time. Regulations required agents, even those not working in public view, to dress conservatively, drawing as little attention as possible. Reavers sported snakeskin cowboy boots and Stetsons. Lang wondered if he had replaced his standard-issue Sig Sauer with a Colt Peacemaker.

  He stood as erect as a much younger man, dark eyes glinting like a hawk's. A square jaw and a nose that had been reset none too gently gave him a pugnacious air, a fighter ready to spring from his corner. Most bald heads only made men look old. Reavers's, shiny and bullet shaped, made him look tougher, an effect like YulBrynner or Kojak.

  Reavers gave Gurt a hug not entirely avuncular. "Welcome back, Sugar. We've sure as hell missed you 'round the old corral."

  Lang winced. Geo-ethnic was one thing; dialogue from a B Western movie was another. Had Gurt slept with the guy? It didn't require the Agency's level of intelligence to see he sure wanted to, age notwithstanding.

  Gurt endured the embrace a second longer than Lang thought friendship required before slipping by Reavers and into the office.

  Lang followed, hand extended. "Lang Reilly. I remember you."

  Reavers stepped in front of a desk that definitely was not government

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  issue, motioning Lang to sit. "Shore Ah do. Legend 'round here among us desk cowboys. You're the hombre from Intel went and got Gurt's daddy out from East Berlin, snatched him just like a sidewinder with a rat."

  Lang had never thought of himself as a rattlesnake, but he sank down into a leather wing chair, another piece of furniture the government was unlikely to supply. In fact, Reavers's office was the only part of the Agency's station that did not reflect the budget cuts prompted by the fall of the Soviet Empire.

  "I don't know whether to say thanks or be insulted."

  Reavers kept his hand on Gurt's arm as though she needed help getting into the mate to Lang's chair. "No insult intended." He looked from Gurt to Lang.

  "Ah see by the drops on your clothes it's still drizzlin' out there."

  It was only then Lang noticed the office had no windows. A windowless office meant top security. Reavers was probably Chief of Station. He certainly had the seniority for it.

  "Still wet and miserable," Lang agreed.

  Reavers slid behind the desk and leaned back in his chair. ''You remember: It can be like that for days. Makes me miss home, even in the summer when the devil himself won't come to West Texas because of the heat. Hell, I recall onc't as a kid Ah bet my whole week's allowance that the sidewalk was hot enough to fry an egg."

  Gurt bit. "Did you win your bet?"

  Delighted to have a straight man, Reavers laughed. "Never knew, Sugar. Time we got the egg to the sidewalk, it was already hard-boiled."

  Lang chuckled appreciatively while Gurt, ever literal, thought that one over.

  Reavers snapped forward to place both hands on his desk, palms down.

  "What kin Ah do for you folks? Ah gather Gurt ain't ready to go back to work, and Lang, you're too old to go through the training again."

  Corny or not, Lang was beginning to warm to this guy, even if he was as full of bullshit as a cattle pen. "I'm afraid you're right," he said good-naturedly.

  "I'd never make it through The Farm again. But I could use the experience. I don't know if you remember Don Huff from the old Berlin Station. He retired, was in Spain, and got murdered. His daughter asked me to look into it."

  Lang proceeded to tell him what happened. "Didn't know Huff, but Ah'm damned sorry to hear someone survived duty in Berlin back then only to get shot. But life's not fair, as one of our presidents observed. Only thing he said ever made sense. What kin Ah do for y'all? Sounds like somebody's on your ass."

  Gurt leaned forward in her chair, exposing just a smidgen of cleavage above the neckline of her blouse. "We're afraid the Frankfurt police are looking for Lang." She looked at him with the trace of a smile. "He left his baggage behind ... along with a name tag."

  Lang now knew what it had been like when one of his small friends wet his pants in front of the entire second grade.

  "That was downright careless," Reavers observed. "Wouldn't last as long

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  as free rice an' beans in El Paso, you did that while you were with us. But you know that. Agin, how kin Ah hep?"

  "If they are looking for Lang by name, a driver's license, passport, and a few credit cards in some other name would help," Gurt said.

  Reavers slowly shook his head. "Lang, I dunno if you're aware how bad the politicians back home have cut our budget. You'd think the Commies were the only enemies we'll ever have. Hell, even ' lowin' for inflation, the Agency got nearly three times the fundin' twenty years ago we get today. Hardly enough to pay the phone bill, let alone keep track of ever' raghead in Germany wants to become a martyr with a homemade bomb
. Hell, I say, one 0' them jihadist nut bags wants to Join Allah in Paradise, we need to help him along 'fore he takes Americans with him. What we need an' need bad is someone in Washington unnerstan's these A-rabs not gonna rest till the whole Western world's one big Islamic pile o' camel dung. But ..."Lang was truly astonished when Reavers stood, leading them to the door. "You know my ass'd be in th' crack, Ah git caught providin' false ID. Hell, Ah git caught, I'll claim Gurt here threatened to shoot me. C'mon downstairs, git your picture took, an' we'll have you fixed up in an hour. An' you can be on your way to ... ?"

  "Heidelberg," Gurt said. "There's a man there Huff worked with."