The Nassau Secret (The Lang Reilly Series Book 8) (22 page)

46.

472 Lafayette Drive

Atlanta

9:22 pm

The Next Evening

              Dinner dishes in the washer, the Braves idle tonight and Manfred presumably asleep despite his pleas to watch the zombies of
The Walking Dead
, Lang and Gurt settled into a comfortable silence to the muted background of Harry James trumpeting
Honeysuckle Rose.
She with one of her romance novels, he with Daniel Silva’s latest. Gabriel Alon was on the trail of the bad guys.

              “You lived that life,” she had once observed. “Why do you read about it?”

              “I never lived in Tel Aviv or put together a team of assassins to eliminate terrorist organizations. That was more your job except back then the enemy was different. All I did was read papers and watch TV across from the Frankfurt railroad station, pretty dull since the commies controlled the media. Sort of fun to fantasize what being a real spy might have been like.” 

              The phone rang.

              He got up in annoyance. “Another damn telemarketer or robo call. The no-call list doesn’t do a bit of good.”

              She peered over the top of her iPad. “I forget why we don’t get rid of the phone. We use only our cells.”

              “We keep the land line because it is more difficult to monitor, can’t be swept up as easily as a cell without a direct tap. Far as I know, NASA hasn’t put a bug on all the landlines in America. . .yet.”

              “And you would know if they had?”

              If he heard, he didn’t answer.

              The phone was in Lang’s office, the former broom closet under the stairs.

              “Hello?”

              “Lang, old boy! Good to hear your voice!”

              Jacob’s expressed joy would have denied the fact he and Lang had been together only days ago but Lang played along. “Good to hear from you at this end, too. What’s up?”

              “The book you sent me, smashing! Really enjoyed it!”

              Prearranged signal Jacob had significant new information.

              “So, I wanted to thank you and remind you Rachel’s big six-oh is upon us. Hope you can join us for the occasion.”

              Jacob’s information was too sensitive to entrust to any communication other than face to face.

              Either that or the man had taken his life in his hands by revealing his wife’s age.

              “I’ll get back to you, let you know.”

              The conversation had been cryptic and better, short. If somewhere in the transmission across the ocean a satellite had been involved making it subject to electronic snooping by ECHELON, it would be a very small needle in a very large haystack.

              Lang stopped by the kitchen to fill the ice bucket before returning to the den. He was taking the scotch from the cabinet under the bar when Gurt asked, “Well?”

              He topped a glass off, the whisky flowing over the ice like an amber mountain stream racing downhill. “Jacob. I need to go back to England.”

              “Perhaps better I go.”

              He turned, the drink in his hand untouched. “You? Why?”

              “You have been there. They would not expect a woman.”

              “They?”

              Lang loathed the indefinite antecedent but in this case it was all too definite.

              “The people who tried to kill you.”

              Lang’s hand went to the angry red scar across his left cheek where the gunman had raked him with his weapon. The stitches were due to come out in a week but the doctor was less than optimistic anything short of plastic surgery would remove the disfigurement. Lang was debating with himself whether the mark was distinguished or just ugly.

              Gurt’s opinion: “
Schmissen,
dueling scars, went out of fashion a long time ago and you didn’t even go to German university. That one makes you look like a criminal. Worse, it makes you stand out in a crowd.”

              Almost the same words he had said to himself.

              The latter comment was the most damning of all. Or would have been had Lang any intent of returning to some covert employment.

              “Besides,” Gurt continued, “Your face . . .”

              She needed to say no more about his face. Lang started to protest but she cut him off. “Manfred is now out school for the summer. You only have to take him to summer camp in the mornings at 9:00 and pick him up at 4:00. If all I have to do is see Jacob, I should return in no more than two days, three at the most.”

              “But. . .”

              Lang knew when a discussion had reached its end. Anything he said now would simply be the beginning of a new discussion.

              The idea of send her was not exactly preposterous. While with the Agency, Gurt had not only won both men’s and women’s marksmanship competition, she had run through a series of partners in what was euphemistically called ‘close quarters combat’ training. In actuality, it was a no-holds-barred, eye gouging, ear-biting, below the belt hitting test of survival. Gurt had sent a number of her partners to the hospital, enough that she was exempted from further practice less the entire Frankfurt agency wind up in casts, slings and bandages. In real life conflict, she had demonstrated she could more than merely take care of herself. Had Rudyard Kipling lived long enough to encounter Gurt, she might have joined the she-bear, the female cobra and the Huron squaw as “deadlier than the male” in his
The Female of the Species.

              She put down her iPad and stood. “I can be packed in ten minutes.”

              “Won’t do you a lot of good. Earliest flight is late afternoon tomorrow. You could, of course take the GulfStream.”

              “And announce my arrival? I’d rather be autonomous on Delta.”

              “Hardly. Autonomous means self-ruling, independent. On a commercial airline, you’re a prisoner in an aluminum tube thirty thousand feet up. On your own aircraft, you command the people doing the flying. Better yet, the food is decidedly better. I think you mean
anonymous.
”

              Gurt’s English could still use a little work.

              “Whatever. I will take the first flight.”

47.

Terminal Three

Heathrow International Airport

06:40 Two Days Later

              Gurt ducked under the sign with the silhouette of a woman in a skirt, the international sign for the women’s toilet. She counted to a hundred and went back out.

              He was still there, the man in a leather jacket far too heavy even accounting for the terminal’s more than generous air conditioning. He lounged against the far wall, only his eyes visible between the brim of his cap and the top of the newspaper he pretended to read.

              She had noticed him waiting at the gate the instant she exited the jet way from her Delta flight. In days gone by, she would have assumed he was waiting to meet an arriving passenger but with increased security, access to arrival/departure concourses was denied all but those holding boarding passes or security clearances.

              Possible he was looking for one of the other three hundred plus people the Boeing triple seven dash two hundred was disgorging but she didn’t think so. Hence, the quick trip to the ladies’ loo.

              She pretended not to notice as she passed between the immigration booths, having her passport stamped. Her unwanted companion breezed through the unmanned ‘UK Citizens and Arrivals from EU Countries’ stations.

              At the terminal’s rail station, she pretended interest in papers stacked in the racks of a news stand, so much so she (intentionally) missed the first of the every fifteen minutes trains connecting the airport and Paddington Station in central London. When she boarded the next one, she thought perhaps she had been overly paranoid. The idea proved unduly optimistic when he stepped from the car behind hers.

              So much for her hope that she had a better chance than Lang of arriving unnoticed.

              With outward calm, she took the yellow, Circle Line, exiting just as the train began to depart the Embankment Station. Other than a pair of giggling, dark skinned, near eastern nannies pushing prams, a red coated Chelsea Pensioner who might be lost so far from home at the Royal Hospital and a chubby business man who could have come from central casting (dark suit, Homburg hat, umbrella tucked underarm), Gurt had the platform to herself.

              Maybe the guy really hadn’t been following her.

              Maybe pigs will fly.

              Whatever. She had lost him, he had lost interest or she had had a seizure of paranoia, a not uncommon disease in her former line of work.               

              She back-tracked, changed lines twice, exiting finally at Green Park. A short walk down St. James Place brought her to a dead end and the entrance to what looked like the entrance to an elegant town house. Three seventeenth century town houses, actually. Converted into the Stafford Hotel.

              The lobby was reminiscent of pictures Gurt had seen of a Victorian parlor: Dark wood chairs with velvet upholstery, stone topped tables and portraits blackened with age and coal dust from what had been open fireplaces. She dropped her single bag in front of the discreetly recessed registration desk and tendered her passport and credit card.

              In her room on the second floor, she debated a shower to wash away the grime of travel, real or imagined. Hygiene prevailed and she stepped into a stall more like the cockpit of a jet liner than something any Victorian might have experienced. After several false starts, alternately drenching herself in a spray straight from the Arctic followed by an experience with which only a lobster in a pot might sympathize, she luxuriated in a fine warm mist that seemed to peel away fatigue and said grime alike.

              Reluctantly, she swathed herself in a towel and climbed into a clean pair of jeans, a loose-fitting jersey and a pair of sensible if less-than-attractive shoes. Her purse strap was over a shoulder.  

              Minutes later she was back in St James Place, walking purposefully if not too swiftly back to Green Park. The landmarks seemed to float by: Horse Guards where the Royal Horse Guards paraded with the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, the Banqueting House, that Paladin Whitehall palace on which Charles I had spent so much to decorate only to be beheaded on a scaffold erected along one of its upper windows. Nelson was on his pedestal both guarding Trafalgar Square and providing roosts to the resident pigeons. Straight across the square and into The Strand. A turn down a narrow alley past the one of the world’s few remaining Templar temples and a climb up a worn marble staircase and she was standing in front of the old fashioned opaque half glass door on which chipped gold letters announced ‘Jacob Annulewicz, Barrister.’

              Jacob must have heard her enter the outer office, for he bustled from his inner sanctum with arms out stretched. “Gurt, dear! It has been forever!”

              She returned the hug, accepting a peck on the cheek along with the odd combination of odors of stale tobacco smoke, old papers and leather polish. Being ushered into the inner office, she spotted the source of all three: A battery of pipes in a rack behind a desk barely visible under an avalanche of papers and a pair of newly shined shoes in the seat of a chair over which a black robe was draped. A white periwig perched on top of the chair’s back like a raptor awaiting its next prey.

              Jacob moved a stack of file folders from the other chair and motioned her into it before stepping over a banker’s box, circling the desk and finally having a seat behind it. “So very long since Rachel and I have seen you, dear. She will be delighted. I’m assuming you’ll do us the honor of letting her whip up one of her special dinners. She’s gotten very interested in Schechwan cooking.”

              Gurt couldn’t recall if she had ever been in Jacob’s office before. Surely she would remember a place that resembled a library after a hand grenade went off in it. She had a very stark and painful memory of Rachel’s culinary efforts, though. She had endured more enjoyable root canals. At least the dental procedure did not result in days of gastric turmoil.

              “Perhaps you will let me do the honors. I understand London now has several outstanding restaurants.”

              Jacob’s brow wrinkled in puzzlement. “How very strange. Almost the exact words Lang spoke when he was here in this very office.”

              “Imagine that.” Gurt edged her chair closer to the desk. “I believe you have some information you wanted to deliver orally.”

              Jacob used his tie to polish the frameless spectacles hanging on a cord around his neck, not quite ready to abandon the social chit-chat. “You know, Sechewan, the really spicy Chinese food.”

              Gurt let a smile flicker across her face. Jacob was an old acquaintance but time was short if she was going to get home tomorrow. God only knew how badly Lang would spoil Manfred in her absence. Perhaps she should get the business part of her visit started.

              She was digging in her purse. “I’m familiar with the dialect.” She reached over and moved a stack of papers to make room on the desk top. “Let me show you something.”

              She placed Gren’s letter to the Duchess on the space just vacated. “We are pretty sure the murdered woman stole this from the exhibit in Nassau. Lang and I are pretty certain it’s what got her killed.”

              The glasses came to roost on Jacob’s nose as he scanned the piece of paper. “Seems innocuous enough, moonflowers being delivered. What about it. . .”

              Gurt placed the cardboard over it. “What got her killed was this:

May 23, 1943

Your Royal Highness:

                                                      you

                                                           boat will arrive

                                               dark

   moon.

                                                                            first

                                                                        June .

                                                  Yours faithfully

                                                  Axel Werner Gren

            
 
Jacob’s lips moved as he re-read it for the third time. “You boat will arrive?
You
boat?”

              Grurt cupped a hand to form a ‘U’. “’U’ boat, as in
Untersee Boot,
a submarine.”

              Jacob inhaled loudly. “So, that’s it. The Society of St. George knows the Duchess of Windsor--if not the Duke--was at least complicit in giving some sort of aid to the German submarines, in short, a traitor.”

              “The Society of St George?”

              Jacob explained, ending with, “. . . They might well have been responsible for Dianna’s death. If not, they were most assuredly prepared to make sure she didn’t survive the auto crash, to end her embarrassment to the Crown. And if Princess Di was an embarrassment, think about the revelation the queen’s blood relative, her uncle, might have been helping the Nazis.”

              Gurt shook her head. “We don’t know that. It is pretty clear the Duchess was involved somehow. But the Duke. . .? And why?”

              “
Why?”
Jacob leaned back in his chair, glasses twirling in one hand. “Why, the crown, of course!”

              “Gurt’s puzzled expression was her only response.

              “Had Hitler managed to conquer Great Brittan, my dear, the Duke, Edward, would have been the obvious choice to put on the throne in place of his brother. It is no secret the Windsors were big--how do you Americans say it? Big German fans. Whether because they actually believed in the Fuehrer’s rubbish or because they knew of their potential coronation, I suppose will never be certain.”

              “But,” Gurt protested, “there’s nothing to connect the Duke with submarines.”’                  

              “Guilt by association, my dear. These people, the St George, don’t care. They are going to make sure none of this sees the light. It doesn’t matter how many they have to kill to make certain of that.”

              “You are sure? That is what you wanted Lang to know?”

              For an answer, Jacob opened his desk drawer, took out a flash drive and dropped it into Gurt’s palm. “It’s all there, both in the original cypher and my translation. Lang can decode it for himself if he has any doubt. That came from the personal computer of the leader of that nest of vipers, one Alred James himself. Bye the bye, I’d guess it would be extremely deleterious to your health if one of James’s minions found you in possession of that little electronic marvel.”

              Gurt told him about the man she thought had followed her.

              “If he was shadowing you, you didn’t lose him that easily. He probably dropped you off to a confederate you didn’t recognize. Maybe two or three of them.”

              Gurt thought of the business man with the umbrella. He had certainly looked her over, scoped her out in the present parlance but, then, she was used to men giving her second (and third) looks. “I don’t think so. I was careful. There was no one in sight when I entered the Stafford.”

              Jacob reached for a pipe, looking at her questioningly.

              She shook her head, no. “I’d prefer you didn’t.”

              Jacob put the empty pipe in his mouth and sucked noisily. “As you wish. But as far as being followed, remember: London probably has the most camera coverage of any city in the world. At least one went up on nearly every street corner during the Irish problems in the Seventies. Like all other government programs, this one never really ended when the Irish quit throwing bombs. I can assure you, Alred James is in position to have his people view every camera live or on tape. You might not have been actually followed . . .”

              Gurt got the idea. She stood, dropping the flash drive into her purse. “Then it’s best I take this and deliver what you’ve told me to Lang. I’m not sure what we can do to stop this man.”

              Jacob was reaching for the tobacco jar. “I am.”

              Gurt stopped and turned, her hand on the door knob. “You mean . . .?”

              “I do.”

              “But how?”

              “Trust that to me.”