by Gregg Loomis
"My silence."
The man leaned even farther toward the invisible prop, grinning, his tone as calm as though he were discussing a roundup just finished. "That's about it, pard'nuh. Sorry."
Lang's foot crept toward the crowbar. "At least let me see if I understand. Tell me if I'm right or wrong. You can do that much."
Reavers nodded amiably. "Shore can. Jus' one caveat: You try somethin' funny, my friends here'll shoot. Even if you got heat from somewhere, you can't get 'em all. So fire away."
He laughed at the double entendre.
"Skorzeny," Lang began, feeling the iron beneath his foot. "He was involved in that train from Budapest in 1945, the one with all the treasure on it, right?"
Again the grin. "One o' th' things always impressed me 'bout you, Lang: You could draw a line from A to Z without botherin' about the rest o' them letters."
Lang's foot began a slow movement back, no more than the nervous shifting of weight a man about to be executed might exhibit. "And he, Skorzeny, helped himself to part of the treasure, a treasure he had known about since he deposed the independent government of Hungary virtually by himself."
"So far, you're battin' a thousand. Hell, why do need me? You already know the answers."
"Not quite. Indulge me. In 1945 the Agency, then OSS, decided they would bring some Nazis to the US, those that might be helpful, like Von Braun. Skorzeny was one of them' because he knew where the rest of the train's treasure was and he sure as hell wasn't going to tell anyone while he was awaiting sentence from some war crimes tribunal."
Reavers shifted again, becoming tired of the game. ''You're guessing."
"True, I am. But I'm right, aren't I?"
"Go ahead," Reavers said noncommittally. "I'm listening."
"I'd bet Skorzeny never told you and someone decided to send him back."
Reavers nodded. " 'Cept you couldn't jus' put him on a plane or ship and deport him. Wasn't that easy."
Lang began to scratch. "This damn priest's robe's gettin' hot. Mind if I take it off?"
Reavers gestured with his pistol. "Take off whatever you like, 'Cept I see a weapon, you're dead meat."
"Thanks."
As he slipped the cassock over his head, Lang stooped to lay it on the ground. With the hand away from Reavers, the one in the dark, he picked up the crowbar. Now. he was armed. What use the tool was going to be against automatic weapons was unclear.
Stall.
"So, the Agency made arrangements to ship him off to the only Fascist country left, Franco's Spain. But there was one very serious, unanticipated problem."
For the first time, Reavers appeared interested. "And that would be?"
"While he was in the States, Skorzeny fathered a son. Having been born there, you couldn't just bundle off a U.S. citizen, even one a few months old. I'd guess his mother was making threats, too."
"Bitch!" Reavers spat. "Never met her, came on board long after she had a fatal auto accident, but I unnerstan' she was a real pain in the ass, always askin' for more money."
Lang was trying to look into the lights, ascertain exactly where they were. "That wasn't the only problem. The kid, Skorzeny's son, knew damn well who he was, insisted on visiting his father in Spain almost every year from 1960, when he would have been fifteen or so, until Skorzeny died in 1974. In case you're interested, the tip off was 1974. The visits ended the year Skorzeny died."
Reavers was not amused. "You couldn't know that about where the kid went, not unless you knew…"
Lang was guessing now, putting odd pieces together to gain precious time. "That Harold Straight is Skorzeny's illegitimate son? Look at the man, Reavers! Add a scar down his right cheek and he couldn't belong to anyone else. You guys created a whole identity for him but you left the Immigration and Naturalization records of his frequent travels to Spain. Seemed a little peculiar that in all the rhetoric of his he never mentioned foreign travel. You invented an identity for him, too. Problem was, it wasn't secure enough. The media, even his political opponents, ran their background checks on computers, I bet. First time someone wants to see the actual records, birth certificate, maybe, school records, et cetera, you have him killed. That was a huge red flag, Reavers."
Reavers nodded again. Was that sweat beginning to glisten on his face? "Yeah, 'bout the time of Skorzeny's death, I was the new boy on the block, trying to cover up Paper Clip. We knew there'd be a public howl, always is, we do somethin' isn't 'xactly Goody Two Shoes. My predecessor had some of our best forgers fiddle the local paperwork up there in Minnesota. 'Course, anyone who knows documents is likely gonna spot a fake sooner or later but we figger'd the newsies, they'd take a quick look an go away. Fact is, by '74 we'd gotten all the goody outta all those Krauts and congressional committees were beginin' to ask embarassin' questions. We didn't want no more honey, just wanted the bees off'n us. By that time the Skorzeny kid was a big deal in state politics, sure-fire to make it to Washington in some capacity. His old man, Skorzeny, was sort of a mystery man, few if any photos lying around to compare to Straight. That's why we had to take care of Huff. Pity."
''Yeah, shot him in the back of the neck, same way the Russkies executed prisoners at the Lubyanka while you were there. He was getting too close to learning about Skorzeny's son. He wouldn't have let that go, would have kept digging till he found out the boy was very much alive. From there, it's a short step to seeing Straight as your man, the Agency's champ, right?" Lang was almost certain he had located the source of the light; the same two men with automatic weapons were holding powerful torches. Could he get them both at once? No matter, he had to try. "Put Straight in the White House and surprise! The old Cold War level of funding comes back. You've got a rubber stamp for every plot gets hatched out at Langley. Want to blow up Saudi Arabia? Go to it! Sabotage the French economy, rig an election in Turkmenistan? Your man, Straight isn't in a position to say no. That's really what all this is about, isn't it, keeping me from finding out the Agency is trying to put its very own stooge in the Oval Office?"
Reavers's amiable manner vanished. "Damn right! An' we'll succeed, 'least America better hope we do. Bunch of mamma's-boy bed wetters runnin' the country, 'fraid of a bunch o' rag-heads we shudda bombed back into the Stone Age right after 9/11. We need Straight like…"
"Like Germany needed Hitler in 1933." Lang was coiling his body, getting ready to throw the crowbar. "Wouldn't do that, I was you," Reavers advised. "Throwin' things like that, somebody's gonna get hurt. More'n likely, you. Be a good boy and drop the crowbar."
Now or never, as the books say. Lang dropped a shoulder, ready to sling the crowbar at the nearest light. If he hit it, the man holding it, or even came close, there was a chance the distraction would give him a split instant to dive for protection behind one of the mounds of dirt, tombs, or columns.
"Hold it!" Reavers shouted, the Sig Sauer coming up.
"No, you hold it!" The voice came from Lang's left, Reavers's right. A very definitely feminine voice. "And moving those lights you should not consider even!"
Lang thought he was seeing some sort of wraith, perhaps one of those Roman spirits he'd thought about minutes ago. But ghosts, particularly those of Romans, probably didn't wear nuns habits as did this one. Tall, her face hidden by the shadow of her wimple, she stood at an angle where she could clearly see Reavers and his two men without being blinded by the light. Lang could see only the top half of her body. The rest was in shadows, giving the impression she was somehow floating in air.
Reavers froze, turning only his head. "Now look, Sister, you got no dog in this fight an' there's no reason for you to get hurt. You jus' mosey on back to where you came from, an' everthing'll be just hunky-dory."
She didn't move. "Down drop your weapons and put hands high. Now!"
It was a ghost! Lang knew that voice, that inflection, even the choice of words.
Reavers came to the same conclusion. Or at least a similar one. "Fuchs, the Kraut bitch! That idiot I sent to the hospita
l…"
Reavers complaining how hard it is to get good help.
He spun, raising the Sig Sauer.
It was a big mistake, the last one he would ever make.
From somewhere beneath the floating head, a quick jet of flame leaped into the darkness and there was the sound like someone clearing their throat, a weapon with sound suppressor.
To Lang, everything seemed to move at a sluggish pace, to take on the tempo of a film in slow motion.
Reavers stood on tiptoe and did a graceful pirouette that belied both his size and the fact that he was wearing boots instead of ballet slippers. The anger in his facial expression was replaced by one of astonishment as his eyes crossed at his nose as though trying to see the grayish-red hole between them.
Just as Reavers's knees buckled, Lang was on him, snatching the gun from his limp grasp before diving into the shadows.
Lang crashed into unforgiving masonry.
It went dark.
A darkness of centuries, the gloom of the pre-creation universe, a night so black it could be felt as well as seen.
It also was very, very quiet.
The quiet of the tomb, Lang thought, suppressing a post-traumatic giggle at his own wit.
Seconds, minutes, hours, could have passed before a man spoke. "Okay, we got us a Mexican standoff here. We go out and then you do. Nobody else get hurt."
There was too much of an echo in the enclosed space to be sure as to the source of the voice, but it came from close by.
Lang started to reply, thought better of it, and said nothing. No point in speaking even if the acoustics would make it difficult to trace the sound. There was about as much chance Reavers's clique would simply walk away from the power of having a U.S. president under their control as there was the Agency would agree to be funded solely by the sale of Girl Scout cookies.
"We got a deal?" the man wanted to know.
This time Lang did speak. "Sure. You turn on your light so we can make sure you're leaving."
Pause, then: "Damn thing's broken."
Right.
Lang thought he had an idea as to the general position of the speaker. Reaching into the void with the hand that didn't have Reavers's gun in it, he touched a wall. Feeling his way upward, he came to an opening, one of the many windows that made these tombs look so much like the very houses the deceased had occupied in life. He moved up to his knees and considered his position.
The streets were narrow, with few places to cross onto parallel lanes. The tombs all opened the same way and were closed on the other three sides. It was almost certain, then, that Reavers's men were facing the same way he was. Since he had been at the top of the hill, or near it, the two gunmen had to be slightly below. The problem was, he was unsure of where Gurt was. He could only hope she, also, was on the same street and, therefore, looking out in the same direction.
"We're waiting," came the same voice. "No point in anyone else getting killed." Lang hoped it was not mere optimism that detected an edge to the tone, one of mounting desperation.
He stuck the Sig Sauer in the waistband of his trousers and crawled around the interior of the tomb, feeling as he went. Halfway up the rear wall, his fingers found a niche. Further exploration 'discovered a form with irregular features. Sitting in the darkness, Lang used both hands to touch his find. A funeral bust, the head and shoulder of some rich Roman.
Holding the statue in his arms, he crawled back to where he recalled the entrance was and into the street. Sharp rocks, crumbs of jagged marble, and roughly edged cobblestones bit into his knees and elbows as he crossed to the other side and groped for the top of the structure. Again running his hand along the top edge, he ascertained it was fairly smooth, although he had no way of knowing whether the adjacent downhill sepulchre was taller, shorter, or the same height. His memory told him each mausoleum had its own individual form.
He stood the bust on the wall and retreated back into the tomb.
He was almost certain the two men had been carrying some sort of automatic weapons. It took extraordinary discipline in a firefight to put guns like that on single-round fire. He was counting on the fact that these men would not even think twice about spraying bullets at any target.
He gave the closest thing he knew to a prayer that Gurt was both alert and watching in this direction. He yelled, "Gurt, go for it!" knowing she would recognize the ruse.
At the same instant, he flicked the flashlight on and off, illuminating the bust. Ordinarily, marble would not be mistaken for flesh and blood. Likely it wouldn't this time, either. But the impenetrable darkness, tense nerves, and the lightning-like flicker that robbed color from whatever it touched might, just might…
The reaction was instantaneous. Before Lang regained the shelter of the tomb, two geysers of ragged flame spouted from a tomb, almost next to Lang's like laterally held Roman candles. Although large, the necropolis's cover made the sound deafening, a single stream of explosions that beat against Lang's eardrums like fists, beat so hard as to be painful. He could clearly hear the splatter of fragments of stone and plaster as they pelted the outer wall of his sanctuary.
He couldn't duck completely out of sight, though. He had to see
… See and hold on to the flashlight, which he stuck into his belt.
Before the first long bursts of two automatic weapons had ceased their clatter, a smaller streak of fire came from somewhere across the street. One of the automatics' muzzle flash traced an arc upward and went dark.
One down, one to go.
The shooters had been so close, Lang could smell the acrid stench. of burned 'cordite. He had been lucky the men had been too intent on escape to hear his foray into the street.
His ears ringing from gunfire, Lang now could hear only his own heartbeat, a sound so loud he was surprised the man right down the street couldn't hear it, too.
Lang had marked the source of enemy fire, although the darkness prevented an exact measurement. He guessed fifteen feet, twenty at the most. Reavers's pistol in hand, he began a hands-and-knees approach to a spot in the curtain of black where he estimated his enemy might be.
In a couple of minutes, Lang calculated he was in front of the building that housed the remaining gunman. He held his breath, the better to hear the other man's, but silence alone greeted the effort. He knew he couldn't stay here, exposed in the street. Another burst of gunfire or the sweep of a flashlight would reveal his position.
His outstretched hand touched a number of pebbles. Shifting the gun to his left, he picked up the small stones, rolled them in the palm. of his hand for a second, and threw them in the direction of the gunman.
This time the man didn't fire. But he did move, a clear scraping sound as his feet knocked over rocks in the darkness.
Quickly switching hands, Lang fired two shots in the general direction of the sound as he swiftly rolled across the cobblestones..
As anticipated, automatic fire churned the street-where Lang had been. A short burst, but enough. Two more flashes of light, from somewhere across the road, a scream that sounded like it came from only a few feet away, and all was silent again, the quiet after the blast of gunfire seeming to have a physical weight of its own.
Lang felt the wall of something, a tomb or other structure, and slowly stood, pressing against the coolness of the stone. He fumbled at his belt and removed the light. Inching along the wall until he felt the opening, he held the Sig Sauer in his right hand, the light in his left. Pointing the gun into the darkness, he pushed the button on the light.
Even in the puny beam given by a shattered lens and cracked bulb, he could see the fight was over. One man stared into eternity with blank eyes; wherever he had been hit, death had been instantaneous, as there was no blood visible. The other sat stiff-legged in a red puddle against the rear wall of the little house, his hands uselessly trying to staunch the flow of crimson from his throat. He didn't look up as Lang stepped over and kicked away the M16 automatic rifle, thankful Reavers had not ad
ded nightscopes.
The man gave a final sound, a noise like a gargle, and slumped to his side. No breath was visible.
''You are glad to see me, Liebchen, no?" Gurt was right behind him. "Or is that a gun in your pocket?"
The old Mae West line was one of her favorites.
He turned to embrace her. "Frankly, my dear, I couldn't give more of a damn, Rhett Butler notwithstanding. You have no idea…"
She gently pushed him away. "Later. Right now, we must leave this place. Someone could have the gunfire heard."
Lang thought of the pressurized, climate-controlled part of the necropolis open to a limited segment of the population. "Possible, but I'd say the insulation was enough to quiet an A-bomb."
Gurt's eyes flickered around the small area lit by their flashlights. "A-bomb? No one has-"
He put a finger to her lips. "You're right. Later."
She swept the beam of her light over the two dead men. "And these?"
"They're already in a cemetery. What's the point of having them moved to another?"
She turned her head to peer up the slope. "And Reavers?"
"Him, too. Let the Agency figure out where he disappeared."
He went back to the top to retrieve his cassock.
Minutes later, a priest and a tall nun were walking away from St. Peter's Square. There was nothing particularly unusual about either. Unless the careful observer watched them long enough to note that they seemed to touch a great deal more than decorum would require.
And they laughed incessantly.
FORTY-SEVEN
The Amalfi Coast, Ravello
Hotel Palumbo
Two days later
Most of the roads carved into the mountains of Italy's Amalfi Coast are one and a half car widths wide, a measurement dating back to a time when bicycles were the norm and tiny, shoebox-sized automobiles navigated the hairpin turns with a sense of adventure, if not complacency. Today, buses crammed with increasing numbers of tourists stretch from the stone walls on the seaward side of the road to the sheer rock on the other. Other traffic seeks such nooks and crannies as they can find until the behemoths squeeze past with a cheery honk of the horn and a puff of foul-smelling diesel smoke.