The Julian Secret

by Gregg Loomis

  "Illusion?"

  "Illusion of feminine mystery."

  He was still holding the door open, standing in her path. "Gurt ..."

  She shook her head. "I heard you tell Reavers how you thought it out, bow you had guessed that Skorzeny was one of the Germans the Americans brought over after the war and that man Straight was the son of Skorzeny. If you can pull that hare out of your cap, you tell me how I knew."

  Lang stepped back outside to join her in the narrow hall. This wasn't a conversation he wanted overheard. He pulled her inside and shut the door. They sat on the bed.

  "Okay. I'd guess it went something like this." He thought for a second, arranging his suppositions in much the same way he had lined up theorems in high school geometry. "You knew I was trying to track down whatever Skorzeny took from Montsegur. The only clue we had before that helicopter showed up was Julian's inscription, the one about the palace of the single god."

  She ruffled his hair with her fingers. "So far, so bad. Just before the helicopter flew over us, you were talking about Julian and a palace of some sort."

  He shrugged. "Okay, so tell me."

  ''You will not like what you hear."

  "I can stand it."

  This time it was Gurt who shrugged. " 'Palace of the one god.' What could that be but the Vatican?"

  It took a moment to sink in. "Palace of the sale god and you immediately knew what Julian meant?"

  "I was there, was I not?"

  He nodded slowly, absorbed by what she was saying. "It took Francis and me a while to be certain that was what was meant. You figured it out in minutes."

  She grinned, fishing in her bag for a cigarette. Just before she lit it, she chuckled. "I told you, you would not like it. I called a friend in the Rome station."

  "A friend posted with the Agency? You knew the lines would be secure."

  "Exactly. I asked this friend where Reavers was because I knew if what I had guessed was true, he would be trying to kill you, too."

  Lang stared at her with uncomprehending eyes. "Asked where he was?

  You know that's need-to-know only."

  "As I said, I asked a friend."

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  "A former lover, you mean."

  "I said you would not like this. You have no reason to be, er, angry. We were through before 'you came to Rome last year."

  What she said made irritatingly good sense. Lang had no possible reason to care what Gurt had done since they had broken up before he married Dawn ten years ago.

  That, however, did absolutely nothing to stop more than a twinge of jealousy.

  Lang pretended he was only interested in how she had found him. "So you found out Reavers was in Rome. Then?"

  "I got the nun's dress and hung down ..."

  "Hung around."

  "Stayed around the Rome station."

  ''You were conducting surveillance of the Agency's Rome station and nobody noticed?"

  "I was stationed in Rome, remember? I knew what 'was covered by cameras and what was not. Besides, I convinced a nice man to rent me a room just down the street for only a few days."

  The green-eyed monster stirred again. ''A nice man?"

  She shook her head impatiently. ''A nice man who must have been at least seventy. Do you want to interrogate me, or shall I complete?"

  Lang's curiosity outweighed any irrational jealousy. "Go on."

  "So, when I saw Reavers come out, I followed him."

  Lang was incredulous. ''You managed to follow a station chief?"

  "No one is as cautious as we were in the old days. Reavers has been around so long, he probably forgets women now work there."

  It had taken a threat of congressional intervention to bring that about, if Lang remembered correctly.

  "Anyway, while I was observing him, he was observing what I took to be a priest, you. I didn't contact you because I might have been watched myself. I was also afraid to call your hotel. I just waited until I saw Reavers and his men follow you into the bottom of the Vatican."

  Lang nodded, digesting the information. Then: "The gun-how did you get that?"

  "I told you, I had a friend in the Frankfurt office."

  Must be some kind of a friend to violate a couple of dozen regs concerning firearms as well as information, Lang thought sourly. If the bastard didn't get summarily fired, he would have spent the rest of his career counting printer cartridges in some place infected with rats smaller only than the scorpions. But he said, "I guess l owe you a 'Thank you.' "

  She stood, unzipping her blouse. "It is late and you have had hours since this afternoon to recover. You owe me more than 'Thank you.' "

  ***

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  It was early the next afternoon when reality stuck its ugly head into paradise. Sara's daily call warned of decisions that had to be made for the foundation and clients who were getting restless at the unavailability of their lawyer.

  It was time to go home.

  "We can fly Naples-Paris-Atlanta," Lang said, taking the phone from his ear. "Or we can drive to Rome and fly direct."

  Gurt gave her head a slight shake, a gesture that always implied something negative. "I will be staying in Rome."

  Lang forgot the airline reservationist on the other end of the line as well as the per-minute profit the hotel was making. "You're what?"

  She took the receiver from him and hung it up with one hand while she caressed his cheek with the other. "It is something I cannot do, Liebchen. I cannot live on your char ... er, char ..."

  "Charity."

  "Your charity forever."

  "But you're not," he protested. ''You have a job teaching ..."

  She waved a dismissive hand. "And after what I have done for the last fifteen years or so, you think teaching rich kids to mangle the German language is going to fascinate me?"

  Lang had known her long enough to know she was slow to make up her mind and implacable once she had.

  He had thought he had lost her once, and now he was about to lose her for real.

  He turned and went into the bathroom to collect his toilette articles so she could not see the misery he knew was on his face. "I wish you well. I'll miss you."

  When he returned from the bathroom, she was gone.

  EPILOGUE

  Berlin

  May of the same year

  Jochim Stern, Ph.D., was puzzled. He had been summoned from his archaeology class at the university to examine some very interesting pottery shards. Interesting because of their location, not quality. One would expect such things to be unearthed every time Rome worked on its underground metro or Cairo began a new sewer line. In fact, the Herr Doktorhad consulted with a number of cities with classical Greco-Roman pasts.

  But Berlin?

  As far as he knew, neither Greek nor Roman had ever set foot in the area

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  that was Germany's historical capital. In fact, the Germanic tribes had served up one of Rome's few defeats, routing Augustus Caesar's army at Teutoburg Forest in the first century. As a result, Rome had turned elsewhere for conquest and trade. That being so, what about these pieces of pottery he was holding in his hands as he squatted in the raw dirt?

  No doubt they were ancient in origin, highly likely part of a Greek-style amphora. A large one, the sort of vessel used to store wine or oil.

  The Herr Doktorlooked up from the excavation of a new U-Bahn line. This was the area where Hitler had had his bunker, wasn't it? Hard to be sure. In their fury, the Russians had not only demolished whatever was left of the Fuhrer's redoubt and everything in it, filling it in, they had made a sort of park surrounding the place so that it was difficult if not impossible to ascertain exactly where Hitler's last hours had been spent. Probably the only green space the Russians had contributed to East Berlin, and now far too valuable to the expanding city to leave untouched.

  So, what was a Greek or Roman urn doing here?

  As far as Stern knew, Hitler had never been particularly interested in
ancient history, but the shards were at the same layer of digging at which workers had found Nazi uniform buttons, fragments of what had been furniture, and the like, all of which confirmed that the pieces of the amphora were placed here at the time of the war.

  He placed the shards in a large plastic food bag and stood. Like many mysteries surrounding World War II, this one wasn't going to be solved anytime soon. Just as well. That period of German history was best forgotten.

  At least by the Germans.

  Atlanta, Georgia

  Park Place, 2660 Peachtree Road

  July

  Grumps was less than great company. Alternate snores and burps from his corner of the tiny kitchen announced he had ravished his evening meal and, as usual, fallen sound asleep.

  Lang looked up at the bar that separated the kitchen and living areas. "It's your companionship and good looks, fella. That's the only reason I keep you around."

  His attention returned to the evening news, today consisting. almost entirely of the unanticipated withdrawal from the race for his party's nomination for president by one of the leading candidates, Harold Straight. With tearful countenance, the former aspirant for the nation's highest office had announced that "family matters" would need his exclusive attention for the next several years, necessitating not only an end to his present quest but a termination of all

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  political activity. Based firmly on a total lack of facts, the talking heads interviewed one another, eliciting speculation ranging from AIDS to alcoholism, to the possibility of a scandalous divorce, to possible criminal prosecution for offenses unnamed.

  Liberal politicians and the press hailed the event as demonstrating whatwas-right-with-America, a theme unheard from the left since Newt Gingrich had declined to run for reelection to Congress. The right wing received far less media attention, as usual, but it was clear that the viciousness of partisan-politics had, in their view, defeated a just cause.

  Lang smiled with the satisfaction of true knowledge.

  It was, however, his only satisfaction. In the two months since his return from Europe, he had buried himself in work, micromanaging the foundation to the extent that several of his top employees were seeking positions elsewhere. Sara had simply refused to come to work for several days, asserting he was unfit for association with human beings. Only pleas of the longevity of their relationship, promises of a real vacation at the end of the summer, and an assurance he would reduce his caseload had lured her back to the office.

  He had, however, had time to read of Rome during the German occupation and the sparse literature available concerning Otto Skorzeny. Although none of the books actually connected the two, Lang knew from the Huff CD that the SS officer had-been there. Supposition had answered at least one question: Why had Skorzeny taken only the one amphora and not come back for the second? Time, pure and simple. By the end of April 1944, Allied troops had broken out of the German encirclement of the invasion beaches and were heading for Rome as fast as artillery and trucks could be supplied. Skorzeny had skedaddled, no doubt with the first container, the mark of which was still visible in the dirt when Lang arrived sixty-plus years later.

  That raised an even more interesting query: What was in it?

  Lang would have to live without even a guess. He would have enjoyed swapping theories with Gurt. Another reason to miss her.

  His return without Gurt had somehow been communicated throughout the building by a system he suspected akin to blood in shark-infested waters. Almost nightly, his doorbell rang and one or more of the building's single women presented him with a casserole, an entree or something else edible, almost all of which had clearly come from one of the caterers nearby. After all, cooking was work, and few of these women would admit to being forced into such drudgery.

  Lang had remained steadfast in his declinations of invitations to dinners and cocktail parties.

  He knew the single women in this building, the Wet Cats, were as predatory as any animal in the jungle and even more desperate to find someone to rescue them from the alternative of having to support themselves. Wealthy and single, he was a wildebeest in lion territory.

  Even in his placid marriage to Dawn, he had learned that men were preservationists, women restorationists. A man saw the woman he loved and

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  took her as is, not wishing (or noticing) so much as a change in hairstyle. A woman took a man as a work in progress, a project to be molded and shaped to her specifications. That "aromatic tobacco" would become "that stinking cigar" overnight, and his "comfortable favorite chair" a "ratty embarrassment."

  And soon.

  Lang wanted none of it.

  Dinners with Francis, shared Cubanos, probably this small, easily maintained condo, and Grumps were likely to become no more than vapors of memory if he gave in to the onslaught of single women who were desperate to eliminate the specter of necessary employment.

  He knew self-sufficient women-lawyers, doctors, and the like-but he never seemed able to meet them unless they were already taken. In fact, there was a federal prosecutor, a petite redhead, he'd almost asked out before she appeared in court with a diamond of blinding quality and a size that skirted vulgarity. He told himself he was disappointed, but he knew what he felt was relief.

  He was not particularly surprised, then, when the doorbell chimed just as he thought he had reached a decision as to which Healthy Choice dinner to nuke in the microwave. Another ready-to-eat something, delivered with a hopeful smile by another woman looking for a male life-support system.

  Grumps, long used to the parade, normally favored the applicants with little more than a single open eye before returning to his twenty-three-hour-a day nap. This time, Lang could have sworn the mutt leapt into the air without touching the floor. Barking furiously, the dog nearly took Lang's feet out from under him in his rush to the door, where he stood on stubby hind legs while using the front two to frantically scratch the paint from the wood surface.

  No doubt some woman had decided to seek intercession by Grumps and was delivering a bag of treats.

  "Traitor!" Lang snorted at the frenzied animal.

  He had barely cracked the door when Grumps used his head as a wedge to pry it wide and disappeared into the hall to dance wildly around Gurt's feet.

  She put down a small suitcase to kneel and croon to the excited dog.

  Lang simply stood there until she looked up.

  "Langford, close your mouth. It is most unattractive hanging open."

  "Grumps wrote and asked you to come back," he suggested with a grin.

  She nodded toward the suitcase, both hands still on Grumps. ''You are not a gentleman? You would have me my own luggage carry?"

  Still not sure he wasn't hallucinating, Lang reached out for the bag. "You came back to get something?"

  She stood, brushing long black dog hairs from a pair of hip-huggers. "That could be said."

  "What?"

  She made a show of running salacious eyes over his body. "That is for you to discover."

  He simply couldn't stand it any longer. Neither could she. They met just

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  beside the door in an embrace that showed little chance of ending soon despite plaintive barking.

  Finally inside, they stood on the small balcony overlooking the city.

  "Gurt, have you decided .... ?"

  She turned, putting a finger across his lips. "I decided I would rather teach rich kids to mangle German with you than track potential terrorists across Europe."

  "Does that mean ...? "

  "It means just what I said, nichtsandres. You must be satisfied with that."

  And he was.

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