by Gregg Loomis
Lang was as much at a loss to understand Gurt's relationships with such women as he was to understand why she could spend hours at a mall purchasing nothing. Both seemed pleasant, if pointless, activities but were part of why she was still here.
He hoped she never went back. She represented a fresh love, the first since the death of his wife, and a chance at having children of his own. But Gurt had changed the subject every time the question of a more permanent arrangement had come up.
Except the one time she had made it clear that marriage presented her with more problems than she wanted. "If it is not disrepaired, fixing it does not need" was how she had characterized their relationship.
Inertia, a powerful ally, was on her side.
Gurt was putting on a watch. "What time are we reserved?"
"Eight, and you recall we're only going across the street."
Catty-corner across Peachtree was an undistinguished low-rise condominium. In the basement was La Grotta, a northern Italian restaurant where the service was almost as good as the food, the geniality of the proprietor as sunny as his native Tuscany, and the prices almost reasonable. The convenience was hard to beat, too. Still, Lang missed the funky surroundings, wretched food, and collegiate atmosphere of Manuel's Tavern in Atlanta's quirky Virginia-Highland. The gathering place of such intellectuals, real and imagined, as Atlanta had to boast, it had been there he and Francis had shared a dinner twice or so a month, a place a black priest and a white lawyer speaking in Latin went unnoticed. Gurt had liked it, and Lang was unsure why they didn't go there anymore. It was, he supposed, just one of many inexplicable changes that take place in a man's life when a woman enters it.
"We are driving?" Gurt wanted to know.
"Across the street?"
"My new heels are not so good for walking."
Lang was becoming used to things like expensive footwear that were meant more for display than walking. Gurt wore clothes that emphasized the curves her height already magnified. Whatever the practical shortcomings of her wardrobe, entry into La Grotta would be heralded by dropped plates, spilled drinks, and women's catty remarks.
Lang loved it.
He was buttoning on a shirt, having decided he would not be wearing a tie. "So try another pair of shoes. It's a beautiful evening for a walk."
As they went out the door, Lang was conscious of the black fur ball that was Grumps. The dog's resentment at being left alone would be replaced by joyous tail-wagging upon their return, particularly if a tasty morsel personally wrapped in foil by the head chef was tendered as a peace offering.
They had just stepped out from under the building's porte cochere when a streak of lighting split the night, followed by a roll of thunder that Lang could have sworn made the ground tremble.
Gurt gazed up. "I think your beautiful evening may not be so good. I think perhaps we will swim to the restaurant."
As though staged, the skies opened with the comment, drenching Lang. Gurt had ducked back under shelter.
"Shit!" Lang stepped back also. Although exposed to the downpour for only a second, he looked as though he had just gotten out of a bath with all his clothes on. He reached into a pocket and handed Gurt car keys. "Have 'em bring up the Porsche while I change."
Lang customarily parked and retrieved his own car. The temptation for the young carhops to test the acceleration of the Porsche was too great. Lang had heard the protesting squeal of tires as the accelerator of some other resident's auto was pushed to the firewall. Tonight, he'd take a chance. A glance at his watch told him they were already late, and he knew the restaurant's popularity made it difficult for them to hold reservations.
He stood in front of the bank of elevators, shivering from the lobby's aggressive air-conditioning. There was a dull thud and the building shuddered, lights blinking off before the condominium's generators cut on. For a second, Lang assumed lightning had struck. Then he heard screams from outside.
Instinctively, he ran for the doors through which he had just entered. He was so intent on looking for Gurt that it took him a second and third step to realize he was walking on a carpet of shattered glass. A woman was leaning against a dark car, a Mercedes, weeping uncontrollably, and there was the smell of something other than the ozone odor of a close lightning strike.
Still not seeing Gurt, Lang's eyes followed a number of people running from his right to left, toward the parking lot and underground-parking entrance. A small crowd had gathered around flames that seemed to be fueled, rather than extinguished, by the sheets of rain-rain Lang no longer noticed. Another flash of lightning showed Gurt, a head above most of the others, silhouetted by the fire.
Lang was running, his sense of smell telling him there was a scent that had no rational reason to be here, a mixture of transmission fluid, plastic, and rubber.
And burned nitrogen sulfate.
He stopped beside Gurt, at first unsure of what he was seeing. A flaming mass of twisted steel sat on four wheel rims, resembling newsreel footage of Baghdad. Mercifully, whatever was left of the carhop was so burned; so disfigured, that it was indistinguishable from the charred remains of the car. Only by looking closer, seeing the tiny shields imprinted on the wheels, was Lang able to tell that he was looking at what had been a Porsche.
His Porsche.
The Porsche. he had always parked and fetched himself. The Porsche he was supposed to have been in when it blew up. Without turning around, Gurt slipped an arm around his waist. "They are perhaps back?"
"They" could only mean Pegasus, the international criminal cartel Lang had encountered.
"I don't think so," he said quietly, unable to tear his eyes away from flames that were beginning to diminish as they exhausted the supply of fuel. "They know if anything happens to me, they'll be exposed."
It was the agreement with the devil he had made a year ago. Revelation of Pegasus's secret would have destroyed the organization, but it also would have destroyed a great number of innocents. Extortion to fund a foundation honoring two of its victims had seemed the only reasonable compromise.
The wail of emergency equipment enveloped them as Gurt and Lang turned to go back into the building, dinner forgotten.
Lang was not surprised when the doorbell rang forty-five minutes later. Standing in the hall was a thin black man in a rain-splattered suit.
Lang swung the door wide. "Come in, Detective Rouse. I've been expecting you."
It was the same Atlanta detective who had investigated an attempt on Lang's life the year before. The would-be assassin had jumped from the balcony rather than be captured. Lang remembered the policeman as having a slow, ethnic drawl that belied a very quick mind.
The detective looked around the room, nodding to Gurt. "Evenin', ma'am." Turning back to Lang, he nodded. "I 'spect you was. Ever' time there's death 'n' destruction 'round here, you seem to be involved, Mr. Reilly. You care to 'splain that?"
"Lucky, I guess."
Rouse shook his head. "Still smart-assin', I see. I swear, I'm 'plyin' for a transfer outta Homicide to Sex Crimes. You a one-man crime wave. Why wasn' I surprised that it was your car got blown up?"
"You're good at guessing. Maybe you should try the lottery."
"I hit th' lottery an' I never see you agin, Mr. Reilly. Now, why don' you tell me why somebody want to blow up a 'spensive car like that with you in it."
Lang shrugged. "Maybe I blew the doors off their SL 500 leaving a stoplight."
Rouse looked around and chose a chair. "Sit down, Mr. Reilly. I think I'm gonna be here a while, until I gets some straight answers."
Lang sat. "All I know is that Gurt and I were headed to dinner. I got caught in that frog-strangler of a downpour and came back to change. Gurt gave the keys to the carhop. Next thing I knew, KA-BOOM!" Lang frowned. "I don't think I even knew the poor kid in the car."
Rouse looked at Gurt for confirmation before turning back to Lang. "Afta we went at it-las' year, I did some checkin', Mr. Reilly. You told me you were retired N
avy SEAL. Turns out you were with some spook organization."
"We spies always lie."
Rouse sighed. "Know what I think, Mr. Reilly? I think some other spook is pissed off at you, tryin' to get even. I was you, I might tell what I knew for protection."
"Protection from whom?"
"Whoever blew your car up with that boy in it."
"And by whom, those Keystone Kops the city calls police? Those same brave lads who literally dragged a hundred-and-twenty-pound woman out of her car and threw her on the pavement for parking too long at the airport's curb? They can't even stop people from getting shot on the street. Great as the amusement value of being protected by the Atlanta Police might be, I'm afraid the mortality rate is greater. A heartfelt and overwhelming 'no, thank you,' Detective. Maybe if you offered me Inspector Clousseau, I'd take you up on it. Except there isn't anything to tell. I don't have a clue."
The detective stood, pointing a finger. ''You watch yo'sef, Mr. Reilly. You got away with somethin' las' year. Not this time. Mebbe you're thinkin' 'd be a little clearer, we go downtown."
Lang smiled. "I don't think so, Detective. And I don't think you want to have to explain to a federal judge why you arrested me without a scintilla of probable cause."
Rouse let himself out.
Both Gurt and Lang were staring at the door through which he had exited. "If not Pegasus," Gurt said, "who?" Lang clicked the dead bolt. "The same persons who hired those two bullyboys in Seville would be a safe guess."
"But who are they?"
"Good question. See what the man in Heidelberg knows."
There was no longer a question of whether to help find Don Huff's killer. The search was no longer a favor to help the child of an old friend. It had become intensely personal. Whoever had tried to reduce Lang to his composite atoms wasn't going to go away. Twice during the night, he awoke, slipped out of bed, and checked the sophisticated locks on the outer door of his unit, mechanisms that would foil even an expert burglar. But it wasn't the run-of-the-mill felon he feared. For the first time since he could remember, Lang slept with the Sig Sauer out of the drawer and on the table bedside him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Downtown Atlanta The next day
Lang was sorting out the correspondence on his desk while trying to. prioritize the mound of pink callback slips when Sara buzzed him from her desk in the reception area.
"Gurt, line one."
Lang swiveled his chair to take in the floor-to-ceiling view of Atlanta's downtown skyline. "Yes, ma'am?"
"I contacted Franz Blucher." For an instant, Lang was puzzled, then remembered.
"Great. Can he help us?"
There was a pause for a second, Gurt organizing what she was about to say. "He wouldn't talk to me. I told him I was calling for a friend of Donald Huff and the line died. I called back, and he told me to contact him again never." Lang stood, absently watching the ant4ill of pedestrian traffic below. "What did you say to him that-"
"Just as I told you."
"So we only know he doesn't want to help."
"No," Gurt said, "we know who he is. I Googled him." Lang chuckled. "Really? Or perhaps you had 'enhanced' Google."
"Enhanced" Google. Although implemented after Lang had become a victim of the Peace Dividend and retired from the intelligence community, he was aware of at least part of the Agency's awesome fact-gathering potential. Occasionally, a slip or intentional leak of personal information concerning a current actor on the world's stage would bring such howls of privacy invasion, the same "anonymous source" would attribute the revelation to "Web sites and search engines available to the public." Only if the public had a billion or so for a computer system, the capability of which was so immense it could never be accurately measured. Sort of like the distance to the end of the universe expressed in miles. The data that caused the ruckus usually came from global monitoring of communications. The Agency had the capability to eavesdrop on every electronic, noncable transmission in the world. Telephone, computer, everything. Enhanced Google. Its limitations were only in the manpower necessary to translate, read, and index the information. Lang had little doubt that Gurt still knew how to ascertain the passwords needed to tap into the largest single bank of personal information on earth.
And probably the galaxy. "Was not needed," she said. "He is a professor at university, has published many papers, books." An academician who didn't want to talk was an oxymoron. ''About what-what is his subject?"
"All about the war, the Second War."
Made sense; that was what Don had been writing about. "What else did you learn?"
"He is retired. His father was a newspaperman, died in Berlin in 1945."
"All that was on Google?"
"Well, perhaps most of it."
Something was playing around the edge of Lang's mind like a moth around a light bulb.
"He is known to Jacob," Gurt said. "Interviewed him for a book on Auschwitz where Jacob's parents died."
That was it, of course. Holocaust survivors, Jacob Annulewitz.
Jacob had migrated to Israel, chosen Mossad as a profession, then moved to England and obtained British citizenship. In his retirement he had inexplicably chosen to remain in the rain and fog of the UK rather than the balmy sun of the Eastern Mediterranean. In fact, he had begun a second career, the cover for his first, a barrister in London. While he was with the Agency, Lang's path had crossed Jacob's, leaving a trail of friendship as well as professional respect. Jacob, like Gurt, had also been invaluable in Lang's struggle with Pegasus.
"You called Jacob?" Lang asked, slightly jealous Gurt had preempted contacting his old friend.
"I spoke to his wife, Rachel…"
"Who no doubt insisted whenever we're in London to come by for dinner."
There was a question in Gurt's response. ''Yes. How did you know?"
Rachel's cooking was notorious throughout the intelligence community. Common wisdom held that only the Geneva Conventions prevented the output of her kitchen from being used to intimidate the most tight-lipped enemy into diarrhea of the tongue. The last meal Lang had shared with her and Jacob had left him cramped with flatulence that threatened to be terminal.
"Good guess. Is Jacob calling back?"
"Rachel confirmed Jacob and Blucher knew each other. Not so good, but enough, perhaps. Jacob will call and see if Blucher will see us."
CHAPTER NINE
Atlanta, Georgia Charlie Brown/Fulton County Airport At the same time
Burt Sanders loved his job. Airlines were being forced to count each paper napkin used by passengers or face bankruptcy. Shareholders were routinely calling for the heads of executives. Labor unions were snarling like hyenas over the carcasses of the once-proud air-passenger industry. The companies put the number of pretzels per pack passengers were served with their watered-down and no longer complimentary cocktails ahead of retirement benefits of employees. And none of that was Burt's problem.
Not anymore.
He had taken the airline's less-than-generous early retirement offer in what now looked like a vain hope of salvaging his pension. He had taken a job as chief pilot for the Holt Foundation, flying its big Gulfstream V and making sure it was ready to go any time, any place. Oh, the pay wasn't quite as good as the airline's, but the job security sure as hell was. The foundation had about a zillion dollars a year in income and no labor unions. And the head honcho, a lawyer named Reilly, pretty much kept his hands off the flying part of the business, unlike those big-time airline execs who thought they knew more about airplanes than the guys who flew them.
From Burt's point of view, it was an even swap. No more worrying if the airline was going to survive, no more lying to passengers that their flight had been canceled because of weather when the plane was just too empty to make takeoff profitable, no more erosion of benefits and accompanying excuses from management.
Of course, that meant there were times when he had nothing better to do than pretend to be checking on the bird
. Truth was, he'd rather be wiping-down the leather upholstery on this Gulfstream V than sitting around the house, having his wife think up things for him to do. Besides, the boss appreciated the fact that the man who flew the plane took time to putter around it at no extra charge.
He had just confirmed that the ice maker in the forward galley had been fixed and was descending the steps into the brightly lit and antiseptic private hangar. He was surprised to see a man in mechanic's overalls walking toward the plane. He thought he was the only one with a key to the hangar.
"Excuse me," Burt said, unable to think of anything more original. "Can I help you?"
The mechanic was startled. Obviously, he hadn't known Burt was there. "Yeah, I guess. You the one squawked the…" he consulted a sheet of notebook paper, "the digital altimeter readout?"
"Nope, haven't requested any repairs. And I'd be the one to do it."
The mechanic stepped back, taking his time reading the N number along the Gulfstream's fuselage. "Oh shit, says here four-six Alpha, not six-four Alpha. Guess I got the wrong plane. Sorry."
Burt watched him let himself out of the hangar, almost certain he had locked it on the way in. Even more puzzling was the mistake as to aircraft. There were only two other G-Ss based here at Charlie Brown, and neither had a number ending in Alpha. Must be a new guy or a transient airplane. Burt had thought he knew all the avionics repairmen.
Strange.
Burt shut the airplane's door and walked across the ballroom-smooth cement to the single door, being careful to lock it behind him. For him, as a pilot, a break in normal routine was disturbing. Anything not readily and satisfactorily explained was to be distrusted. Even so, he wasn't sure what made him pull into an empty parking spot between the airport's exit road and the fixed-base operator's avionics repair building.