The Elizabethan Secret (Lang Reilly Series Book 9) (17 page)

39.

Split

The arrival of the police had alerted tourists and natives alike that something very unclerical had taken place in the cathedral. Lang made his way outside and into the emperor’s courtyard where he was nearly shoved back inside by the crush of the curious mob. Somehow, he managed to work his way into the vaulted tunnel. He stopped at a small shop, feigning interest in the gold rings and earrings while checking behind. No one seemed to have the slightest interest in him.

If attention was focused on anyone, it was upon a young woman whose endowments were more likely the result of the plastic surgeon’s art than nature’s largess as seen in a very skinny, bra-less tank top. A man, old enough to be her father, but probably not, was slipping a gold necklace over blond hair with very brown roots. Her squeals of delight were drawing the eyes of every man and scowls from every woman. Lang slipped by a couple. He couldn’t understand the language but it was a fair bet the women were not commending either the giver’s generosity or the recipient’s worthiness.

Lang had learned long ago, no matter the nationality, people are more alike than different.

The important thing was confirmation that no one seemed to be noticing him instead of Goldilocks.

Out of the tunnel, he crossed the quay and then the street. A few minutes later, he was displaying ticket and passport to an attendant before walking the gangplank into the stern of the ferry that towered three stories above his head. In front of him was one of those original Fiat 500’s, the model into which Italians successfully cram a family of four plus luggage in space roughly equivalent to the average bathtub.

As the little car parked in one of the four hundred fifty spaces on the main deck, Lang climbed a staircase and came to what he gathered was a check in. Again he showed both passport and ticket, this time receiving a key and directions to deck 3 above. About halfway down a narrow corridor, he found a door with a number matching that on the key.

The house on Lafayette had closets larger than the stateroom. A narrow bunk was secured to the bulkhead to his right. A round faux wood topped table secured to the deck was halfway between it and the stainless-steel shower, basin, and toilet that all but touched each other. Two adults could not have fit behind the pocket door that separated the bath from the rest of the cabin.

There was a window in the far wall.

Odd. Hadn’t Semitz specifically mentioned interior accommodations as a security measure? Tossing his bag onto the bed, Lang took the two steps required to cross the room. An exterior room may lack some measure of security but only if an intruder scaled two stories of steel in the pitch and roll of the sea.

Lang stepped out into the corridor and locked the door. Looking both ways to ascertain he was not observed, he pulled a hair from his head, ran it across his tongue and stuck it between door and frame. The door could not be opened without dislodging the telltale hair.

Thirty minutes of exploration revealed a small electronic casino, two dining rooms, one self-service, the other a sit-down, tablecloth affair, two bars that could have been taken in situ from a 1960’s Holiday Inn and a passenger section reminiscent of the interior of an airline complete with rows of seats. Judging by the two sizes, there was both a first and tourist class for those not paying for a private cabin. Both had the air of family picnics in that most of the passengers had brought their own food, which they were noisily unwrapping and eating.

Lang wondered if that told him anything about the two restaurants.

Shortly after dark, he had his answer: The ship’s chef was the culinary brother of the preparer of the Dubrovnik hamburger. Employing the hardest-to-screw-up theory, he had ordered spaghetti in meat sauce. The plate arrived in the hands of a silent waiter and could generously be described as room temperature. The noodles were chewy and the sauce tasteless. 

The paucity of other diners, perhaps only half a dozen, made Lang wonder if he had somehow missed the memo.

One of the bars was a different story. Lang felt lucky to slide into the last seat at the bar. The chairs around the half-dozen tables were filled with men with others standing, although there were a few women. From a sound system invisible in the dimly lit room, Frank Sinatra extolled the virtues of New York, New York.

That the singer had been dead nearly fifteen years had no perceptible effect on his popularity. Lang took a quick look behind the bar to see if the same pictures of Sinatra and Sylvester Stallone might be there that still graced the walls of half the trattoria in Italy where both were better known and loved than the current Prime Minister.

But then, neither of the Americans had been indicted for, in essence, stealing from their government.

Putting aside the thought, Lang’s eyes searched the labels on the back bar. Not a familiar Scotch label in sight as the bartender moved to stand in front of him, a question on his face.

“Scotch?” Lang asked hopefully. “Scotch whiskey on the rocks?”

The barkeep shook his head. Lang hoped he meant he didn’t understand, not that there was no Scotch.

“Scotch whisky on ice?”

A nod.

Moments later, Lang was looking at a short glass half filled with an amber liquid. He held it up to what light there was. He saw, or thought he could see, the vague outline of what might have been a single ice cube. The glass and its contents were room temperature, too. The Blue Line’s hospitality division seemed infatuated with the ambient heat or lack thereof. The liquid tasted somewhat like Scotch but was raw enough to make Lang wonder if it had been distilled just that afternoon. He could only hope the Blue Line people were better at running a ferry than they were at the food and beverage business.

Lang extended his credit card. Let the folks back at American Express figure out the value of the local currency, the kuna. He left the bar not quite ready for bed.

He was never quite sure how he managed to wind up on the car deck. Pale yellow lights reflected from row after row of empty vehicles positioned in military lines as though waiting for a signal to animate them into life. A single set of stairs lead up to a deck at the bow of the ship. Two stories below, Lang could see flashes of phosphorus as the ship’ bow split the dark waters into double churning silver scars.

Standing at the apex, hands on the steel railing, he let the mild spring air comb through his hair. He could not help but think of the scene at the bow of the ship in the film
Titanic.
Hopefully this voyage would end with better result.

Above, the sky was black velvet punctuated with a million diamond chips. He turned in a complete circle, always amazed at the panorama of constellations. Not one tenth of them would be visible amid the glow of city lights at home.  

He suddenly became aware he was not alone.

A leather sole against metal stairs? The scrape of something against steel?

Young lovers to his right enjoying a romantic spot or just someone taking in the clean, salty air?

He edged slightly to his left to spy whoever it might be against the stars. Something in the darkness of the deck sparkled. It could have been a bit of jewelry reflecting starlight, perhaps the glass face of a watch.

Or something more sinister.

Ducking to keep his profile below the railing, he scurried crab-style toward the back of the platform at the top of the stairs. As clearly as a child’s silhouette drawn on translucent paper, a figure, most definitely male, stood. The posture suggested alertness if not aggression. One hand, the darkness made it impossible to ascertain which, held the object Lang had seen reflecting the starlight.

Long and thin, the blade was unmistakable.

A choice: Lang was between the would-be attacker and the stairs. A brief dash and Lang would be on his way to lock himself in his cabin. Agency training from long ago taught that action deferred was action postponed until the attacker decided otherwise. On the other hand, assassins frequently came in multiples. There could be one or more Lang didn’t know about.

The decision was made for him with the sound of a second set of footsteps.

The missing potential assailant?

Attacker or someone just enjoying an evening at sea?

No time to wait and see.

Lang stamped his foot on the metal deck. The sound drew the attention at the silhouette with knife. He spun to his right, his full body facing a crouching--and hopefully invisible--Lang.

Lang came out of a stooped position like a spring uncoiling. His head hit his opponent just below the sternum, a linebacker meeting a running back at the line of scrimmage.

A “whoof!” of expelled breath accompanied two steps staggering backward, all in a single second. Using both hands, Lang scooped up the unsteady knees and heaved with all his strength. He was never sure if his imagination or his eyes saw a flip in mid-air.

There was no doubting the anguished scream that preceded what could have been the distant splash of a body hitting water.

There was no time for a victory celebration.

The clang of shoe leather on metal deck made Lang spin just in time to see a second flash of star-lit steel.

Stooping, he grabbed at a point just behind the blade with both hands, letting his antagonist’s momentum roll him onto his back. Legs extended into the man’s body acted as spokes to a wheel, a maneuverer he hadn’t even practiced in years, still a pretty fair judo
Tomoe-nage
. The effect was to sling his opponent up and over the railing into empty space. Gravity took him to follow his confederate.

This time, there was no question as to the splash.

So much for star gazing. Lang hurried back to his diminutive room, checked the tell-tale hair and locked himself in. A quick survey of the small space revealed the furniture was bolted to the deck, no doubt in anticipation of weather far rougher than tonight’s placid crossing. For whatever reason, there was nothing to jam against the door.

Lang was in for a sleepless night.

40.

Law Offices of Langford Reilly

Peachtree Center

227 Peachtree Street

Atlanta

Two Days Later

9:26 am

              Lang was still experiencing jet lag. He rarely, if ever, was bothered traveling to those time zones ahead of Atlanta, but the effects of the return seemed to increase yearly. Last night he had almost dozed off at the dinner table, well past midnight Croatian time, and he was unable to go back to sleep this morning when his eyes popped open just past 3:00. It would be a day or two before his body clock adjusted to the five-hour difference. In the meantime, he tried to curb the irritability that resulted from being hungry at odd hours, wanting to sleep in the middle of the day, and a general, ill-defined case of raw nerves.

It did the latter little good to learn the house had been under observation in his absence by persons unknown using a stolen van. According to the police, when found, the vehicle was void of any identifying evidence, including fingerprints, a fact that indicated whoever the persons might be, they were experienced if not professionals in the surveillance business.

Professionals didn’t watch houses for the fun of it, particularly in stolen vehicles. They had been acting on behalf of someone. The question was, who?

The why was clear enough to make him wish he had passed on the auction and remained in the Shropshire countryside among his  friends, Victoria the hawk, Daisy the Brittany, and Elmer the ferret, not to mention Llywen, the Port drinker.

His mood was not improved when he opened his office door to find Brian Conner seated in the waiting room.

Every lawyer, at least every sole practitioner, has a Brian.

This one was near six feet, a handsome young man whose main problem was that he refused to control his bi-polar disorder with medication. He complicated that with being gay.

Originally, Brian had come to Lang with a less-than-credible story of threatened prosecution by the Federal government as retaliation for making public the fact said government was smuggling cocaine on the Stone Mountain Railway, an amusement device whose single route was encircling the state-owned amusement park.

Why had Lang been the lucky lawyer to hear this revelation? They were related, Brain asserted. Lang’s mother had been a Connor, a distinction he shared with perhaps a hundred thousand or more Americans with Irish ancestry.

How had Brian made this genealogical discovery? He never said but he was quite certain his own mother was a covert Nazi as indicated by the swastika design on some of her china. He was not dissuaded by the fact that that particular symbol predated recorded history.

The maternal Nazi was followed in Brian’s visits by the fact that no less than a United States senator had directed the CIA to kill Brian, a plot revealed by the number of helicopters that followed him everywhere.

Paranoia on steroids.

Exchanging a knowing glance with Sara, Lang nodded his visitor into his office.

It would have been much more practical, she had repeatedly observed, to simply order Brian out of the office rather than submit to his bizarre and time-wasteful fantasies of persons in high places who uniformly “had it in” for him for imaginary reasons. And it was never a neighbor or casual acquaintance but someone of national or international recognition.

Lang had to agree with Sara, he supposed. But his southern upbringing abhorred the rudeness and confrontation required to summarily eject the young man. He rationalized that doing so without at least token attention to the latest delusion seemed cruel, like kicking an injured puppy. Yes, it was irrational; yes, listening to the ravings only encouraged more time spent doing the same. But it was Lang’s time and patience to waste.

Lang had rather face down armed killers than engage in personal confrontation. Exchanging angry words was . . . uncivilized. It was a character flaw Gurt had noted and to which he readily admitted. 

Brian plopped down in one of the Louis XV chairs with an insouciance indicative of a lack of knowledge or concern that his rear end was resting in the equivalent in price of a number of luxury vehicles ranging from high-end Mercedes, BMW, Audi, or Porsche. He started to cross his legs; but, as though declining what little comfort that chair might have provided, straightened them out again.

“I wanted you to know we were back from Mexico,” he began.

“We?”

“John and I,” Brian said with an annoyance that said Lang should have known who he was talking about. “We had been there in San Migule de Allende.”

“The artist colony?” Lang interrupted, feigning more interest than he had.

If Brian and John  had been living in Mexico, someone had footed the bill. Most likely his maligned mother. As far as Lang knew, Brian had never held a job.

“Yes, yes,” Brian said impatiently, attempting to cross his legs again and again changing his mind. “The people down there, all the American ex-pats. They are planning to overthrow the government.”

“Which government?”

“The Mexican government.” Brian seemed to resent the question. “That’s why we, John and me, notified Enrique Nieto.”

“Who?”

“The president of Mexico,” Brian answered in a tone that said only an idiot would not know that. “We tried to call him, tell him but they would not let us through.”

From experience, Lang knew better than to inquire as to the identity of the anonymous pronoun so common in clinical paranoia. “So, you left Mexico.”

Brian nodded. “We thought our safety depended on it.”

The phone on Lang’s desk rang.

He reached for it, listened a moment and said, “I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me, but I have an appointment outside the office.”

Brian nodded and stood, well aware how busy important men like he and Lang were. “I understand. I have to call President Obama to alert him to the situation in Mexico.”

Lang leaned across the desk, shaking hands. “It’s urgent you do so.” 

Sara and Lang followed Brian to the door and stood watching as he summoned an elevator.

“Tell me again why you put up with him.” she said.

Lang closed the office door and shrugged. “I can’t, really. I mean, he’s just as handicapped as someone in a wheelchair. Maybe letting him talk is some sort of therapy.”

She raised an eyebrow as she returned to her desk. “So, now you’re not only practicing law but psychotherapy as well?”

Lang couldn’t explain the annoyance he felt, the more so because, as usual, she was quite right. He swallowed the urge to snap back at her, retreating into his office and slamming the door.