by Gregg Loomis
The inspector walked over and took a closer look at the bodies. Even in this poor light, neither had Slavic features nor the coloring or strong facial characteristics of many Latinos. “Don’t suppose they had any other means of identification on them?” he asked.
At his elbow, Patel shook his head. “Not so much as a National Health card.”
Fitzwilliam squatted beside the body that had been shot. Suit was off the rack as were the shoes. The Russians favored tailor-made Italian toggery; the Colombians, fancy boots. He’d bet these men were neither. The fact that both holsters were empty would indicate they hadn’t been ambushed, were at least trying to defend themselves. But how do you get stabbed while you’re carrying a pistol?
He stood, taking in the entire scene with weary eyes. There was something about this South Bank neighborhood off Lambeth Road. He was certain he had never been here before, yet . . .
Annulewicz, the former Mossad agent who had been a friend of Reilly’s. Didn’t he have a South Bank address? The inspector began to pat his pockets in the vain hope he might have Annulewicz’s address.
“Can I help you, Inspector?” Patel offered solicitously.
Fitzwilliam gave up the search but he was sure Reilly’s former friend lived around here somewhere. If the American were involved, that might explain something, although Fitzwilliam was unsure what.
“No, thank you,” he said crisply, beginning to scan the growing crowd of spectators.
His search was almost immediately rewarded. A woman, blonde and tall enough to stand out. Pretty, like the photograph of Reilly’s woman friend, the German. He made his way to her side just as she was moving to the outer ring of spectators, about to leave.
“Miss? Pardon me, miss.” He had his identification hanging from his jacket pocket but he removed the leather wallet with the badge to hold out where she couldn’t miss it. “Miss Fuchs?”
She had to hear but she gave no indication. Remarkable control, he thought. “I know who you are, miss. I’d prefer to have a word with you here than at the station.”
That stopped her. It was only when she turned that he realized she was a full head taller than he.
“Yes?”
“I’m Inspector Fitzwilliam, Metro Police,” he began as though the badge weren’t inches from her face. “We’re looking for an old friend of yours, an American, Langford Reilly.”
The coldness of the stare she fixed on him was undiminished by the poor light. “And what makes you think I know where he might be? If you know who I am, you also know I have not seen him in nearly ten years, maybe more.”
“May I remind you, Miss Fuchs, that harboring a felon is a crime?”
She nodded slowly. “I’ll bear that in mind in case he comes looking for a harbor.”
Even the woman’s back managed to convey indignation as she took long strides into the darkness.
Fitzwilliam motioned to one of the uniformed officers, gave him instructions and returned his attention to the two bodies.
Moments later, the constable returned, pointing towards one of the high-rise buildings. “Residents’ names’r listed inside, just beside the lift. He’s on the twelfth floor.”
Fitzwilliam thanked the man and went inside.
In response to his ring, the door cracked open. The inspector could see a bald scalp and spectacles precariously perched on a nose. “Mr. Annulewicz?” Fitzwilliam held his badge up to the door. “Metro Police. Might I come in?”
The door shut and a chain lock rattled. The door opened again and Fitzwilliam entered a small living room in which two women sat on a couch. He guessed one was Mrs. Annulewicz. The other was Miss Fuchs. He dipped his head in recognition and introduced himself to the others.
Annulewicz shrugged in response to Fitzwilliam’s question. “Haven’t seen him, Inspector. What’s he done that would have Scotland Yard at my door?”
“Police matter,” Fitzwilliam said, willing for the moment to perpetuate the charade that they didn’t know. “We’d like to talk to him.”
Annulewicz turned to the German woman. “Gurt, d’know our old mate Langford Reilly was in town?”
She shook her head. “Not until this gentleman asked me if I had seen him.”
“I see,” Fitzwilliam said, as indeed he did. “And when was the last time you were in the U.K., Miss Fuchs?”
She shook her head again. “I am unable to remember exactly.”
“Ten years or so ago, Miss Fuchs, according to immigration records. I suppose you were suddenly overcome with nostalgia.”
“It had been too long,” she said.
“I don’t suppose either of you have any idea what happened right outside your window, down there on the street?”
“We heard a noise and went downstairs,” Annulewicz said. “I came right back up as soon as I saw someone had been hurt. But the police came before I could place a call.”
Fitzwilliam reached into a coat pocket and produced a pair of business cards. “I won’t bother you further, particularly since it’s been so long since the two of you have seen each other. But if you hear from Mr. Reilly, ring me up.”
They were both nodding as he left.
Amazing how chummy the two of them were, Fuchs and Annulewicz, Fitzwilliam thought bitterly. Truly amazing since, according to the information he had from the CIA, the two had never met.
8
London, South Dock
Lang went down the steps of the Lambeth North Underground Station at a pace unlikely to invite attention. He took the first train. There were few passengers, probably because it was after working hours in what was largely a residential neighborhood. He rode for a few minutes before checking the multicolored diagram of the Underground posted in each car. Brown, Bakerloo Line. Three or four stops and he’d be at Piccadilly Circus, only a few blocks from where Mike Jenson, Dealer in Curios, Antiquities, Etcetera had been murdered only . . . when? Had it been only yesterday?
Lang figured Piccadilly was as good a location as any, better than some. Dinner and theater crowds would provide protective anonymity. And maybe, just maybe, he would get lucky. Maybe an old acquaintance would still be there, one that he doubted was in his service file.
The train shuddered to a stop. A teenaged couple boarded, he with purple hair and an intricate tattoo of a dragon writhing beneath his tank top, she with green spikes of hair along her scalp like the dorsal ridge of a dinosaur. Her gender was ascertainable only by breasts pressing brown nipples against a T-shirt that had been laundered into gossamer. Both kids dripped rings and pendants from various pierced body parts.
And Lang thought the girl at Ansley Galleries had been weird.
He might as well have been invisible. The two sat at the far end of the coach, oblivious to anything but themselves. How they managed what the tabloids call intimate embraces without entangling body jewelry was a mystery.
The faces of the only other passengers, two middle-aged women without wedding rings, managed to express disapproval, curiosity and envy all at once.
Lang was watching what was about to become what he termed coitus terminus subterra interruptus—having sex interrupted by a subway stop—as he reviewed the information he had gained. The translation of the Templar papers indicated that area of France, the Languedoc, might be the place he needed to search. Pegasus’s business in a largely rural part of Burgundy was hardly coincidental.
Pegasus.
Did a modern, multibillion dollar corporation take its name from the symbol of a monastic order that had been officially disbanded seven hundred years ago, or was it an incarnation of the Templars themselves? Pietro had described the Templar organization in terms that also fit Pegasus: receiving a shitload of money from the pope. Could a secret two millennia old account for everything, both in Pietro’s time and Lang’s, a secret whose key lay in a copy of a religious painting by a minor artist?
The questions were enough to make his head hurt.
Hand in hand, the adoring punkers got off at W
estminster. The two spinsters looked as though they were thankful to have survived a particularly nasty epidemic.
Even with the Templar papers, as Lang mentally referred to them, he knew way too little. He had learned during his stay with the Agency, old aphorisms notwithstanding, what you didn’t know was anything but benign. Classic example was Kennedy’s decision to withhold air support, uncommunicated until troops were already on the beaches of the Bay of Pigs. Bet you couldn’t find a veteran of that fiasco who believed what you didn’t know couldn’t hurt you.
EDFA, the Agency’s acronym for “Educate yourself as to the problem, Decide upon the desired result, Formulate the plan most likely to achieve that result, Act.”
Sure. Nothing is impossible for he who doesn’t have to do it.
Lang had only part of the information he needed. He knew that an organization, possibly of historic origin, certainly of vast economic power, wanted him dead, dead like Jeff and Janet. The desired result was to make the bastards wish they had never heard of Lang Reilly: a payback of cosmic proportions.
And Lang still hadn’t done the hard part, formulating a plan. Time to go back to the “educate” stage and start over. Without understanding Pegasus, he would never be able to put a hurt on it. To learn if Pegasus really was somehow connected to the Templars.
Pretty heavy stuff.
Lang had never been particularly religious, probably because as a child he had been dragged out of bed every Sunday morning and forced to spend an hour on the most uncomfortable pew that ever existed in the entire Episcopal Church. Admittedly, he was a little old still to be rebelling. Even in the hours spent in involuntary worship, he didn’t remember ever hearing about Jesus being married, let alone surviving the crucifixion like that Lobineau guy Dr. Wolffe mentioned in one of his footnotes.
Medieval religious orders in the twenty-first century? Pretty bogus.
Education.
So far, more questions than answers.
Like, how had They known to come to Jacob’s flat? Lang was all but positive he hadn’t been followed to the Temple Bar or from Oxford. But if not followed, how? What was it Sherlock Holmes said? Something like, “If you eliminate all possible solutions, only the impossible remains.” Impossible someone had discovered his relationship with Jacob through his service records. Impossible.
Therefore the answer?
Lang had been thinking along those lines already when he decided to renew another old acquaintance, one who wouldn’t be in any service file.
Lang checked his watch as he climbed up the steps to street level. Quarter after nine, just after four in Atlanta. When he had called the office from Rome, Sara had referred to Chen, the client Lang had called from the pay phone downstairs in his building. With the cops in the office, she hadn’t been able to expressly mention the pay phone but that would have been the only reason to name a client from four or five years ago.
From a public phone in the station, he made a collect call, a somewhat easier job than it would have been through an Italian-speaking operator. He assumed there was a tap on the office phone, so he made the call brief.
“Sara, remember Mr. Chen?” he asked. And hung up.
If they could trace that, technology had really improved more than he thought. Star-69, of course, didn’t work with international calls. By the time computer records of calls to his office could be searched, he could go around the world on a very slow boat.
He switched phones and used Herr Schneller’s Visa card to charge the call. Happily, Gurt hadn’t terminated his credit quite yet. Lang was hoping he remembered the right phone number in the office building, that he wasn’t calling the deli across the lobby.
“Lang?”
Sara’s voice could have been an angel’s, he was so happy to hear it.
“It’s me. You okay?”
“Fine now. I thought that detective was going to bring his toothbrush and move into the office, much time as he spent there. What about you? I understand you’ve been accused of a murder in London as well as the one here.”
“To paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports are much exaggerated. Listen, I can’t talk long. Call the priest, ask him to stand by tonight. I need to speak with him.”
“You mean Father . . .”
“No names!” Lang almost shouted with a harshness he regretted. He could imagine Echelon’s programming listening for names of his current friends. Unlikely but possible. “This call is being transmitted by satellite. It isn’t secure.”
Sara was willing to take his word for it. “I’ll alert him. And Lang . . . I know you didn’t kill anybody.”
Lang had a vision of two bodies lying in the street, one with two bullets he had fired. “Thanks, Sara. It’ll all work out.
Lang hoped he sounded more confident than he felt.
CHAPTER FOUR
1
London, Piccadilly
1740 hours
Cloaked in Piccadilly’s evening crowd, Lang stopped to look at window displays every few feet. He didn’t see any faces reflected more than once. He circled the block delineated by Regent Street and Jermyn Street twice, pausing to examine an equestrian stature of William of Orange apparently in the dress of a Roman emperor. Despite his problems, Lang smiled. The king in drag. Before the royal scandals of the late nineties—Di, Fergie, the lot—the English took their monarchs way too seriously.
Lang still recognized no faces from a few minutes earlier.
He checked his watch and hurried along like a man suddenly realizing his wife is waiting at dinner or the theater. At 47 Jermyn, he stopped at an unmarked door. A column of names and bell buttons were to the left next to the rusted grille of a speaker. Lang had to squint to see the names. He was in luck; she was still here.
When he pressed a button, a woman’s voice, tinny over the wire but Cockney accent nevertheless clear, replied, “ ’Oo’s there?”
Lang leaned close to the speaker, both not wanting to be overheard by people on the street but to be sure to be understood by the voice at the other end. “Tell Nellie an old friend, the one who looked but didn’t touch.”
The speaker clicked off.
Nellie O’Dwyer, formerly Neleska Dwvorsik, had been the madam of one of London’s more exclusive call-girl rings since before Lang had known her. Although prostitution was technically illegal, the Brits were smart enough not to waste time and money battling a business no government had ever completely suppressed. As long as Nellie’s girls caused no complaints, she was left alone to operate her “escort” service.
Once safely out of some East European workers’ paradise, a significant number of defectors’ first wish was a woman. Whisky came in a distant second. A relaxed and happy man was a lot easier to debrief than one tense and resentful. When Lang had first been stationed in London, it had fallen his lot as low man on the pole to find a regular source to satisfy the need. The item was creatively entered under “counseling” in the expense accounts that were subject to Congressional oversight.
It was unlikely this service to his country appeared in Lang’s service jacket. If somebody had his file, he doubted they would see Nellie’s name in it.
As one formerly accustomed to the machinations of Marxist-Leninist states, Nellie had expected Lang to demand a percentage, or at least a sample of the goods. It didn’t take a genius to see the downside of being a partner—or a customer—of a brothel keeper. Not smart when employed by a nation with Ozzie and Harriet morality.
Instead, Lang had thanked Nellie for what she had perceived as generosity, even if it would have been at her girls’ expense. “I’ll just look and not touch,” he had said.
The phrase had become a joke in more languages than Lang cared to count, as scantily-clad women repeated it in accented English every time he came to pick up a “date” for the Agency’s most recent acquisition.
Nellie still thought it was funny. Her voice squealed with an enthusiasm little diminished by the age of the electronics. “Lang! You have come back
to your Nellie!” There was a buzz and the bolt clicked back. Lang swung the door open as Nellie’s voice commanded, “You come up here right this minute!”
He could only hope Nellie and her girls were too busy to pay attention to the news on the telly, or at least not enough to have seen him on it. As he climbed the wooden stairs, his fingers closed around the Beretta still in his belt.
What if Pegasus had learned about Jacob through some means other than his records? Would they also know about Nellie? Lang glanced back down the stairs at the only escape route. Once he stepped into Nellie’s parlor, even that would be closed.
If They were waiting for him . . .
2
London, South Dock
By the time Jacob and Gurt exited the elevator of his apartment building, blue lights were swirling through the night. Without exchanging a word, they shoved through the growing circle of people. Four uniformed constables, their faces towards the crowd, kept the inquisitive at a distance from where two men in suits were kneeling beside two bodies on the sidewalk. A third was writing in a notebook as an elderly woman spoke.
Gurt strained to hear. “. . . One man ran away . . . too dark . . . looked out the window soon’s I rang up the police.”
Gurt turned her attention to the two forms sprawled on the pavement. The closest to her was far too bulky to be Lang. The other was facedown. Damning the morbidly curious who were blocking her view, she pushed to one side.
“Look ’ere . . .” a man growled over his shoulder. He turned, took in her size and expression, and got out of her way without regard to how many of his fellow spectators had to be jostled.
The taste of blood surprised Gurt. She had no idea how hard she had been biting her lip. She had had no chance to see the bodies before that policeman had accosted her, sending her back to Jacob’s apartment before he could see how upset she was. She had been in torment until she could get back outside, see for herself. Damn Lang Reilly! Leaving her without so much as a good-bye when he obviously needed help. Serve him right if that were him there. She lifted her eyes for an instant. No, she didn’t really mean that. Please don’t let that body be his.