The Julian Secret (Lang Reilly Thrillers) (14 page)

The door onto the Platz, also reenforced and explosive-proof, opened onto a small foyer. On one wall was listed the American Trade Attaché and a number of businesses, none of which ever had a customer visit because the companies did not exist. The foyer opened onto another room that housed a counterlike desk manned by a white-haired man in the uniform of a private security company. Had he looked behind the desk, Lang knew he would have seen a shotgun in a rack, a television monitor, and an alarm button on the floor. The wall behind the desk was mirrored with one-way glass, behind which were men in full combat gear.

The guard gave Gurt and Lang a smile that was perfunctory only. “Help you, sir, madam?”

From the lack of accent, he was American, not German.

“Good afternoon to you, too, Allie,” Gurt said, holding up a laminated card for him to see.

“Nice to have you back, Ms. Fuchs.”

Gurt gave him a smile. “Is Eddie Reavers in?”

Lang remembered the name, if not the face. Reavers had, like him, been in the Intel section, although he had begun in Ops. One of the few agents to survive capture by the Russians, he had spent two years in Lubyanka prison, the KGB’s own very special hellhole, before be
ing swapped for a Soviet spy. He had returned a hero. Lang was surprised the man had not retired by now.

The guard looked down, checking what Lang knew was a list of anyone expected that day. “Don’t see as you have an appointment.”

Gurt’s smile radiated sexuality. “We—I don’t. Just tell him I’m in town with a friend and I’d like a couple of minutes of his time.”

The guard gave her an uncertain look before picking up a phone and mumbling into it.

Hanging up, he reached under the desk and produced two laminated visitor’s passes. “Clip these on and go on in.” He pointed to her suitcase. “ ‘Cept that bag. You’ll have to leave it here.”

Gurt was still holding her own Agency identification. She put it into her purse and took the one being proffered.

Gurt approached the desk, clearly well-versed in the drill. Extending both arms, she placed the thumb of each hand on a screen that was part of the top of the desk.

The door to the left of the desk wheezed open, and Gurt and Lang entered a small room. One person could not carry enough explosives to blast through the concrete-and-steel reinforcement of this antechamber. Two men in fatigues without insignia and a large Labrador retriever were waiting for them. As the dog sniffed, one man ran a metal detector over their bodies while the second kept them covered with an M16A2 assault rifle.

The detector squeaked at Lang’s belt line, and he grinned sheepishly. “Sorry. Forgot.”

He lifted his jacket to allow the man without the rifle to pull the airport policeman’s weapon free. For the first time, he noted it was a Glock 9mm.

The man held the gun up, suspicious. “Anything else slip your mind, like maybe a stick or two of dynamite?”

Gurt gave the guard a glare that could well have singed the paint on the walls. “Perhaps you forget he is with me?”

Both men were instantly apologetic.

“Sorry, Ms. Fuchs.”

“Just following orders, Ms. Fuchs.”

If Lang remembered correctly, the latter excuse had not played well at Nuremberg. But he said, “It’s okay, fellas. You’re doing your job. Just be sure that’s here when I come back.”

Lang and Gurt stepped onto an elevator that had no buttons for floor selection. It was controlled from somewhere outside. The hallway into which they stepped looked pretty much the same as Lang recalled it: gray commercial-grade carpet that he would expect in a thirty-dollar-a-night hotel room, institutional pale-green walls. The same taste with which U.S. government offices worldwide were decorated. Lang suspected that, buried somewhere in the General Services Administration, there was a grandmotherly lady who furnished such places, a lady who was color-blind, found oatmeal too spicy, and lived at yard sales.

Painted metal doors were closed but could not entirely absorb the hum of machinery. The one at the end of the hall opened.

“Ah hope to hell you’ve come home,” a soft voice drawled.

The accent was southern? No, western. Lang put the name with the face, aided by the voice. Eddie “Lone Star” Reavers. He had been near optional retirement age when Lang had left. He must be in his seventies by now. The man had reveled in his Texas origin, keeping the dialect and mannerisms of West Texas years after he had left it for the last time. Regulations required agents, even those not working in public view, to dress conservatively, drawing as little attention as possible. Reavers sported
snakeskin cowboy boots and Stetsons. Lang wondered if he had replaced his standard-issue Sig Sauer with a Colt Peacemaker.

He stood as erect as a much younger man, dark eyes glinting like a hawk’s. A square jaw and a nose that had been reset none too gently gave him a pugnacious air, a fighter ready to spring from his corner. Most bald heads only made men look old. Reavers’s, shiny and bullet-shaped, made him look tougher, an effect like Yul Brynner or Kojak.

Reavers gave Gurt a hug not entirely avuncular. “Welcome back, Sugar. We’ve sure as hell missed you ‘round the old corral.”

Lang winced. Geo-ethnic was one thing; dialogue from a B Western movie was another. Had Gurt slept with the guy? It didn’t require the Agency’s level of intelligence to see he sure wanted to, age notwithstanding.

Gurt endured the embrace a second longer than Lang thought friendship required before slipping by Reavers and into the office.

Lang followed, hand extended. “Lang Reilly. I remember you.”

Reavers stepped in front of a desk that definitely was not government issue, motioning Lang to sit. “Shore Ah do. Legend ‘round here among us desk cowboys. You’re the hombre from Intel went and got Gurt’s daddy out from East Berlin, snatched him just like a sidewinder with a rat.”

Lang had never thought of himself as a rattlesnake, but he sank down into a leather wing chair, another piece of furniture the government was unlikely to supply. In fact, Reavers’s office was the only part of the Agency’s station that did not reflect the budget cuts prompted by the fall of the Soviet Empire.

“I don’t know whether to say thanks or be insulted.”

Reavers kept his hand on Gurt’s arm as though she needed help getting into the mate to Lang’s chair. “No insult intended.” He looked from Gurt to Lang. “Ah see by the drops on your clothes it’s still drizzlin’ out there.”

It was only then Lang noticed the office had no windows. A windowless office meant top security. Reavers was probably Chief of Station. He certainly had the seniority for it.

“Still wet and miserable,” Lang agreed.

Reavers slid behind the desk and leaned back in his chair. “You remember: It can be like that for days. Makes me miss home, even in the summer when the devil himself won’t come to West Texas because of the heat. Hell, I recall onc’t as a kid Ah bet my whole week’s allowance that the sidewalk was hot enough to fry an egg.”

Gurt bit. “Did you win your bet?”

Delighted to have a straight man, Reavers laughed. “Never knew, Sugar. Time we got the egg to the sidewalk, it was already hard-boiled.”

Lang chuckled appreciatively while Gurt, ever literal, thought that one over.

Reavers snapped forward to place both hands on his desk, palms down. “What kin Ah do for you folks? Ah gather Gurt ain’t ready to go back to work, and Lang, you’re too old to go through the training again.”

Corny or not, Lang was beginning to warm to this guy, even if he was as full of bullshit as a cattle pen. “I’m afraid you’re right,” he said good-naturedly. “I’d never make it through The Farm again. But I could use the experience. I don’t know if you remember Don Huff from the old Berlin Station. He retired, was in Spain, and got murdered. His daughter asked me to look into it.”

Lang proceeded to tell him what happened.

“Didn’t know Huff, but Ah’m damned sorry to hear someone survived duty in Berlin back then only to get
shot. But life’s not fair, as one of our presidents observed. Only thing he said ever made sense. What kin Ah do for y’all? Sounds like somebody’s on your ass.”

Gurt leaned forward in her chair, exposing just a smidgen of cleavage above the neckline of her blouse. “We’re afraid the Frankfurt police are looking for Lang.” She looked at him with the trace of a smile. “He left his baggage behind . . . along with a name tag.”

Lang now knew what it had been like when one of his small friends wet his pants in front of the entire second grade.

“That was downright careless,” Reavers observed. “Wouldn’t last as long as free rice an’ beans in El Paso, you did that while you were with us. But you know that. Agin, how kin Ah hep?”

“If they are looking for Lang by name, a driver’s license, passport, and a few credit cards in some other name would help,” Gurt said.

Reavers slowly shook his head. “Lang, I dunno if you’re aware how bad the politicians back home have cut our budget. You’d think the Commies were the only enemies we’ll ever have. Hell, even ‘lowin’ for inflation, the Agency got nearly three times the fundin’ twenty years ago we get today. Hardly enough to pay the phone bill, let alone keep track of ever’ raghead in Germany wants to become a martyr with a homemade bomb. Hell, I say, one o’ them jihadist nut bags wants to join Allah in Paradise, we need to help him along ‘fore he takes Americans with him. What we need an’ need bad is someone in Washington unnerstan’s these A-rabs not gonna rest till the whole Western world’s one big Islamic pile o’ camel dung. But . . .” Lang was truly astonished when Reavers stood, leading them to the door. “You know my ass’d be in th’ crack, Ah git caught providin’ false ID.

Hell, Ah git caught, I’ll claim Gurt here threatened to shoot me. C’mon downstairs, git your picture took, an’ we’ll have you fixed up in an hour. An’ you can be on your way to . . . ?”

“Heidelberg,” Gurt said. “There’s a man there Huff worked with.”

The Agency man gallantly held the door for Gurt. “Wherever, I jes’ hope this damned drizzle stops ‘fore I mildew.”

Heidelberg, Germany (Hauptstrasse)
Haus zum Ritter
That evening

The eighty-four-kilometer drive from Frankfurt had been uneventful. Their newly minted identities showed them to be Mary and Joel Couch of Macon, Georgia. The stamp on the passports showed they had arrived at Frankfurt that very morning. The document was given careless scrutiny by a desk clerk wearing striped pants and a cutaway coat. The Agency-issued credit card was duly imprinted and returned. The only question was whether they wished to reserve a table at the hotel’s restaurant for dinner. Lang’s response had been an immediate affirmative.

From the windows of their third-floor suite, Lang could see across the empty
marktplatz
to the fourteenth-century church and, beyond, the slow-moving waters of the Nekar reflecting the dull sky of the dying day. Gurt,
smoking what Lang hoped was only her first cigarette of the day, was less interested in the view than observing how a home built in 1592 had been converted into a luxury hotel.

She was studying a gilt sconce that had lightbulbs screwed into what had once been candleholders. “You did not even think when asked about dinner. You have eaten here before?”

Lang was leaning to his left in a vain attempt to get a glimpse of the bluff behind the town, the one crowned with the ruins of a castle. “Years ago, the Agency had a research team here, German college professors who had studied the Russkies, figured out what the Commies would do in certain situations. I came about once a month, always stayed here. One of our tame Germans recommended the restaurant. Best sauerbraten in Germany. They use apples.”

Gurt made a face at the mention of the traditional dish of marinated beef served with dumplings in a rich brown sauce. “You will go home fat.”

He gave her an exaggerated leer, running his eyes from her to the bed. “I’m planning on you keeping me slim.”

“You can eat more often than you can love.”

He sat on the
Federbett
, the soft eiderdown that served as top sheet and cover on German beds, pulling her with him. “Really? Let’s try a predinner workout.”

She lay beside him. “Should we not call Herr Blucher? He is the reason we are here, no?”

Lang sighed as the romance of the hotel in the old city evaporated like the morning mist. Gurt’s priorities were always in order. They were also frequently a nuisance.

“Okay, okay, I’ve got his number right here.”

He scrolled down the list on his BlackBerry and handed the cell phone to Gurt.

She spoke for a few minutes before asking, “What is this place named?”

“Haus zum Ritter
on Hauptstrasse. Does he want to come here?”

She shook her head and spoke a few more words, ending with a cheery
auf Wiedersehen
, turned the phone off, and handed it back. “No, ten o’clock tomorrow at the castle.”

“The castle, not here? Or his house? He wants plenty of people around, doesn’t trust us yet despite Jacob’s introduction.”

Gurt pushed him back against the comforter. “And your workout?”

Lang ate too much.

“Now I know what a Thanksgiving turkey feels like,” he said as they drained the last of their after-dinner schnapps. “Let’s take a walk.”

Outside, the day’s drizzle had washed the skies clean. A myriad of stars hovered just out of reach of the town’s lights. Hand in hand, they walked the block over to the church, its Gothic facade gleaming in strategically placed spotlights. A block over, Lauerstrasse fronted the river in the periphery of the town’s lights. Swaying gently at their moorings, two glass-canopied tour boats, each a hundred or so feet long, rocked gently at their moorings.

“Do you have with you the gun you took from the policemen at the Frankfurt airport?”

Gurt’s question was so out of place in the peace of the night, Lang thought he had misunderstood.

“Huh?”

“The gun, the one from the airport, you have it with you?”

Instinctively, Lang’s hand went to small of his back to
touch the hard metal of the Glock he had jammed into his belt. “Yeah, but why?”