The Julian Secret (Lang Reilly Thrillers) (13 page)

Lang retrieved his belt from the man’s neck. The brown eyes that glared back at him with equal parts hate and fear could be Latino, African, Semitic, or European. The skin was stretched tightly over the facial bones, giving the man a cadaverous appearance that was difficult to appraise in terms of age. Lang cocked the slide and pressed the pistol against the man’s forehead as he resumed the search of pockets. He was rewarded with a wallet containing cash but no identification. Lang had expected none. He had hoped to find some evidence of carelessness, a matchbook from a restaurant in a specific city, a receipt for a rental car or gas, any of the detritus men leave in suit pockets that might give a clue that this person existed before this instant. Whoever he was, he was a pro. He had even removed the labels from the suit, which could have been purchased off the rack anywhere in the country.

Although certain he would get nowhere, Lang slammed the head against a pipe again. “Who sent you?”

The man gasped for breath, managing to whisper between clenched teeth in clearly understandable English. “Get fucked!”

There was an astonished intake of breath from behind. Flicking a glance to the mirror above the sink, Lang saw a man frozen in the entrance to the row of stalls. Only a closer look noted the crossed white leather straps, the dark uniform.

A cop.

The officer’s widened eyes went from the gun in Lang’s hand to the wallet in the other.

Lang was up and moving even as the policeman was fumbling the flap of his holster open. Lang swung an elbow against the side of the head of the man in uniform,
sending him slamming into the wall. Before he could recover, Lang had an arm around his waist while the other hand removed the pistol and stuck it in his own belt.

“Sorry,” Lang said, making for the exit, “but I was just leaving.”

Lang walked as fast as he could without drawing attention. He crossed the main terminal building and was heading toward signs that promised exit and ground transportation in three languages. At the foot of the stairs and escalator he would have to take down to the outside exit, three Polizei were listening to the crackling of small radios pinned to their uniforms. Lang did not have to guess the subject of the conversation.

He should have taken the cop’s radio as well as his gun.

All three saw Lang at the same time and bounded up the steps. Lang spun around and fled, his ears full of shouts to “Halt!”

He ducked into the first concourse he came to, vaulting over the conveyor belts feeding baggage into the security-check X-ray machines. Open trays went flying, filling the air with briefcases, computers, personal items, and unidentifiable objects.

As he ran, Lang was looking for an exit to the outside. The first one he came to was locked, and he could sense his pursuers gaining. There was no time to try another door.

Instead, he charged into a gate area, shoving boarding passengers aside. He fled down the jetway and into the aircraft. Travelers, many stuffing baggage into overhead racks, stared openmouthed as Lang shouldered his way to the emergency exit with the bullish persistence of a fullback seeking first-down yardage. He could hear the police and the outraged security detail yelling for people to get out of the way. Hoping the instructions he had
heard aboard hundreds of aircraft were correct, Lang twisted the semicircular latch on the exit and pushed.

He was surprised at how easily the door opened and fell away.

Sitting on the floor, Lang pushed himself out of the passenger cabin and onto the wing. Eight or nine feet below, two men stopped loading the plane’s baggage hold to gape. One pointed and yelled something.

Leaving the baggage handlers openmouthed, Lang slid off the wing, cushioning his contact with the tarmac by bending his knees. He sprinted for the tug and its train of baggage carts. Before anyone was certain what he was doing, he had the little tractor in gear and the accelerator flat to the floor. He crossed a taxiway, headed for what he guessed was the general aviation terminal on the other side of the field, judging by the small aircraft lined up on the ramp.

Security for general aviation tended to be lax, and there should be no police on duty inside the terminal.

First, though, he had to get inside.

A howl of engines overhead made him look up. A jet was clawing its way back into the ragged, cloudy sky. Only then did Lang realize he was in the middle of a runway. The plane was executing an emergency go-around, vortices of moisture whirling from its wing tips like tiny tornadoes.

No sooner had his ears stopped ringing from the jet blast than he heard the pulsating wail of police sirens. He looked over his shoulder to see four cars, side by side, blue lights flashing, in pursuit and gaining fast. The tug was making perhaps half the speed of the police cars, and there wasn’t a millimeter of space between the pedal and the floor. They would catch him long before he reached the general aviation terminal.

Unless . . .

Thankful that there were few objects to run into on an airport’s surface, Lang drove looking over his shoulder, giving only an occasional glance forward. Just as the police pulled within fifty or so feet, he yanked the wheel so hard he feared one or more of the trailing carts would turn over, taking the tug and the whole train with it. Instead, he was now perpendicular to the oncoming cops. Quickly, he turned in the seat, reached to the rear of the tractor, and released the pin that held the coupling mechanism.

At that instant, the laws of physics became a powerful ally. Recognizing what was about to happen, the driver on the right slammed on the brakes while violently cutting to his right to avoid the loose string of carts now only a few feet from his front bumper. The abrupt braking action immediately broke the tires’ tenuous adhesion to the wet pavement, and centrifugal force, that phenomenon that tends to impel an object outward from the center of rotation, threw the entire weight of the vehicle to the left, entering a four-wheel drift across the rain-slick surface, an uncontrollable slide stopped only by a collision with the car on its left. On the left side, Lang was unsure which of the two remaining policemen, smoke pouring from screaming brakes, first slammed into the baggage train head-on, lifting two carts off the ground and through the windshield of the remaining cruiser.

All four were out of action for the moment, at least.

Relieved of its train, the tug noticeably picked up speed as Lang made for the terminal. Two more police cars were wailing across the field as he pulled up beside a door and dashed inside.

He was facing a flight of stairs, no doubt to the passenger lounge, where those who fly in private aircraft wait for their planes in comfort unequaled by the most luxurious frequent-flyer facilities of airlines. He had
taken a single step when a flash of color caught his attention. On pegs next to the door hung bright green, chartreuse, coveralls, a combination safety and comfort device for ramp workers. He paused long enough to pull on a pair that almost fit. Then he began a leisurely ascent of the stairs, the walk of a man who has nothing to do but pass the time until his shift is over.

In the terminal, uniformed cops poured through the doors, hands on white leather holsters. Wide and fearful eyes of travelers surveyed each other with distrust. It was as though an old and very exclusive club had been invaded by the very people it was organized to keep out. A gently modulated intercom system spoke in several languages, vainly trying to calm passengers whose view of the chase across the field had inspired visions of terrorists everywhere.

Lang followed the
Ausgehen
signs, his assumption that they meant “exit” buttressed by pictures of a bus and a cab. He stepped outside seconds before a line of police took up position just inside the glass doors. He turned a corner and, seeing no one, peeled off the coveralls, wadded them up, and looked for a place to dump them. He didn’t have far to look; Germans, it seemed, loved public trash baskets, placing one every few meters rather than risk the horror of litter. He stuffed the clothes in, covered them with newspaper pages, and walked to a taxi stand.

He had always planned on returning to Frankfurt, but he had anticipated a more conventional arrival.

Frankfurt Am Main
Dusseldorf Am Hauptbahnhof Strasse
An hour and a half later

At mid-afternoon, the
bierstube
was filled more with the smell of cooked sausages and sauerkraut than with people. The sole waiter was fussing with tablecloths and napkins. The only other customers were an elderly couple whose fragile appearance was belied by the meal they were finishing: roast pork, red cabbage, and dumplings.

Lang was the only other person in the single room.

Gazing out of the plate-glass window to the building in which he had spent so much of his time with the Agency, he wondered how the square could be so clean and yet appear so grubby. After all, the Hauptbahnhof Platz had been subjected to extreme urban replanning by the U.S. Army and Royal Air Forces and totally rebuilt only sixty years ago. Yet the indelible smudges of coal-burning trains seemed to have been there for centuries.
Frankfurt was a city of commerce, banking, and other financial services, not beauty, although the rebuilt Romerberg, the medieval center of town, had a certain charm.

He sipped at the dregs of a beer, still tasting the sharp brown mustard with which he had coated his bratwurst. He had just put down his glass when Gurt came through the door, wheeling her suitcase behind her.

She glanced around the room an instant longer than it took to see him before she sat across the table.

Lang stood, leaned across, and kissed her cheek. “I was beginning to worry.”

She rolled her eyes. “Worry? You? You downshut the airport. I had to wait an hour before the U-Bahn began to run again.”

Lang eased back into his chair. “I did what?”

“Robbing a man at gunpoint, then hitting a policeman and taking his gun. You managed to wreck four police cars, too.”

Lang was uncertain if what he detected in her voice was admiration or the atavistic Teutonic horror of disorder. “Me? What makes you think I had anything to do with it?”

A snort told him she did not consider the question worthy of an answer. “After waiting an hour, you can imagine how crowded the train from the airport was.”

As though imposing a penance, she drained the remainder of his beer.

“You could have taken a cab,” he suggested helpfully.

Another snort, this one of frustration, as she gave the empty glass a look of regret and set it down. “The length, er, line, er, queue for cabs was forever. I have hunger. Can we eat rather than discuss the problems you caused?”

Gurt signaled to the waiter, who was already openly staring at her. In mere blue jeans and nondescript blouse
and jacket, she could have stopped traffic. He appeared at their tableside with considerably more speed than Lang had seen him move before.

“Tageskart
, menu?”

Lang knew there are few things, including
War and Peace
, thicker than the organized listing of daily specials for both lunch and dinner, as well the standard dishes, each arranged as to appetizers, soups, main courses, and desserts, that is a German
Tageskart
. He often wondered if the war would have turned out differently if the Germans had spent as much time fighting as they had reading menus.

Like most of her countrymen, Gurt perused the pages with the care of an investor checking the closing market reports before ordering exactly what Lang knew she would, the bratwurst.

They waited until the waiter disappeared behind the curtain that screened the kitchen from the dining area before Gurt repeated his question. “How did I know it was you that turned the airport up downside? Maybe a lucky guess. More likely because you left your suitcase with your name tag on it.”

Lang winced at the breach of the protocol he knew so well. One does not put the standard name tag on baggage. Such markers decrease considerably the deniability of having been somewhere. Additionally, personal baggage of Agency personnel frequently contained items like a totally plastic, X-ray-proof pistol, component parts of bombs, and other things likely to be frowned upon by officialdom. Identifying the person possessing such things could lead to unnecessary difficulty. He had put the tag on for a brief trip on behalf of the foundation when the Gulfstream had been in the shop for its hundred-hour inspection.

Not only did the damned thing have his name, it had
his address. The German cops were probably already in touch with American authorities.

Swell.

Gurt looked lovingly at the tall glass of beer the waiter sat before her. “Of course, I reported the suitcase stolen.”

“Thanks. I didn’t have time to.”

Gurt took a tentative sip from her glass, closed her eyes, and sighed in delight.

“That beer makes you happier than sex.” Lang chuckled.

“I do not have to depend on you for the beer,” she retorted.

“And you can enjoy it even when you have a headache.”

She put the glass down. “I never have those kind of headaches.”

True.

Lang became serious. “Think they believed you?”

“About the beer or the sex?”

He shook his head. “About the baggage being stolen.”

She shrugged. “Who knows? I do think it might be wise to cross the Platz there and see if we could get a favor from some friends of mine, see what they might be able to do with the local police.”

Very little, in Lang’s experience. Germans, like any other nationality, did not accept being an American agent as an excuse for creating bedlam on their soil.

“I suppose they could at least find out if they bought your story.”

Thirty minutes later, Gurt and Lang crossed Mosel Strasse to an unimposing four-story stone building. Wet with the continuing drizzle, the rock face seemed somehow ominous, like the facade of a prison. Both Gurt
and Lang knew that, as they approached, they were appearing on a series of surveillance cameras concealed in the stone work and behind the small, tinted windows made of explosive-proof plastic, reinforced sufficiently to withstand any projectile smaller than an artillery shell. Well out of sight from below, the roof sprouted a forest of antennae. The venetian blinds on the windows were rubber-lined. When drawn, they prevented window-glass vibrations that, scanned by laser or other listening devices, could betray conversations inside.