The Pegasus Secret (13 page)

Okay, so Lang Reilly was in Rome and someone wanted Morse to know that. But who and why?

A criminal warrant was a matter of public record, but not a lot of citizens scoured the court dockets. Morse had hoped to keep it quiet, not spook the lawyer. Until Reilly had fled, that is. Still, whoever had sent this fax didn’t get
the information from the media that there was a want out on Reilly, not yet, anyway.

That led to the conclusion that the sender had a source inside the department. Morse shot an involuntary glance around the room, gray furniture on gray carpet in gray cubicles in what had been the appliance floor of a Sears & Roebuck. People came and went, phones rang, and computers clicked in a familiar cacophony.

Not exactly high security. Anyone could have mentioned that Langford Reilly was a man the Atlanta police would like very much to speak with up close and personal.

Granting that the word had gotten out, Morse had been on the job too long to accept anonymous tips at face value. People who ratted from some sense of civic duty rarely did so without a desire for recognition. Sometimes the bad guy was given up because someone wanted to get even for some wrong, real or imagined. Most often, information came for a price, either cash or expectation of future favors.

Morse was willing to bet none of those reasons applied here. Your usual snitch didn’t travel to Rome. Nor did he send anonymous tips by paying the cost of transatlantic faxes. No siree Bob, there be something else at work here.

But what?

Morse pushed back from the metal government-issue desk. No point in wasting time inspecting the dentures of free horses. For whatever reason, he had information that a suspect in a murder case was in Rome, had fled the country. Standard procedure was to notify the FBI who would then send a want to the country involved. Assuming the foreign country wasn’t involved in a major war, the crime in question had no political ramifications, and the local dicks had nothing more pressing on their collective plates, the police would add the name of the wanted person
to a list of criminals, known illegal aliens and other miscreants.

Once and a while, a perp actually blundered into the arms of the Poletzei, gendarmes, constabulary or whatever and got taken back to the United States. Usually the perp got busted for another crime or was spotted in an airport or train station.

Morse was less than optimistic as he went across the room to wire the Fibbies. Reilly didn’t look like a one-man crime wave. But he could have killed Halvorson because the doorman knew he had had a reason to throw that guy off his balcony. Whatever. Except for the real fruitcakes, the odds of a perp killing more than once were nil.

The detective was still thinking when he returned to his cluttered desk. Back to the question of why the anonymous informant had gone to the trouble of letting the cops in Atlanta know that Reilly was in Rome. Only reason Morse could see was that somebody wanted Reilly caught.

The interesting question was why. Answer that and you might get all sorts of helpful information.

Morse leaned back in his chair and regarded the patterns years of water stains had made on the ceiling. But where to start? Man was a lawyer, probably had more than a few people like to see him in jail. Could check the court records, see if Reilly’d lost a case or two he shouldn’t have.

Nah, didn’t seem right. Something told him to try Reilly’s service records, one of those unexplainable, irrational hunches he had learned to trust.

Navy SEAL, the man had said. Small, elite corps. Couldn’t be too many of those around. Let’s see who Mr. Langford Reilly, Attorney at Law, might have pissed off in the service of his country. Morse looked around the room again, this time trying to remember who had the phone number for the military service records place in St. Louis.

Rome
1750 hours

Lang got to the Piazza Navona early, giving himself plenty of time to spot a trap if one was being set. To Lang, the Navona was the most beautiful and historic piazza in a city crammed full of beauty and history. The long elliptical shape recalled the stadium of Diocletian, which the present piazza had replaced. Ancient architecture existed harmoniously with Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque. Of Bernini’s three marble fountains on the piazza, the largest was the Three Rivers in the center. It was also the easiest to locate among the mobs of tourists, artists entertainers, and natives who watched the whole scene with detached amusement.

Lang chose a table outside a taverna and picked up an abandoned newspaper, over the top of which he could watch the shifting crowd of tourists taking pictures, artists selling paintings and entertainers seeking tips from an appreciative audience. He hoped he looked like one more Italian, whiling away an afternoon over a cup of espresso.

Gurt was hard to miss. She turned more heads than the American Chiropractic Association. She stood nearly six feet, pale honey hair caressing shoulders bared by a well- filled tube top. She approached with long, regal steps, designer sunglasses reflecting the sinking sun as her head turned back and forth, searching the piazza.

As she came closer, Lang was glad to see that ten-plus years had not changed the long face, angular chin and high cheekbones. She carried an aura of untouchability that made men keep their distance. Perhaps it was a dose of the arrogance for which her countrymen are noted.

Or a desire to invade France.

Either way, Lang could see her on German travel posters.

There had been a time when his fantasies had placed her in less public places.

She lowered her glasses long enough for her blue eyes to lock onto his before she resumed what appeared to be an idle glance around the piazza. She was waiting for him to make the first move, to let her know if it was safe to acknowledge each other.

Lang vaulted out of his seat and walked over to her, unable to keep a stupid grin off his face. Without having to lean over, he kissed her cheek.

“You look great, Gurt.”

She returned his kiss with somewhat less enthusiasm. “So I am told.”

He took her left hand, surprised at how gratified he was not to find a ring on it, and led her back to where his coffee cup and purloined newspaper waited. He reclaimed the table with a sudden sideways move that would have done credit to an NFL running back, earning glares from an American couple who had not yet learned that in securing taxis and taverna seats, quickness and daring are everything. Gurt sat with the ease of royalty assuming a throne, dug into an oversized handbag, and placed a pack of Marlboros on the table.

“I’m surprised you still smoke,” Lang said.

She tapped a cigarette from the pack and lit it with a match. “How could I not? I am brain-laundered from all the ads your tobacco companies run here because they cannot show them in the States.”

Not exactly true. A number of European countries had banned tobacco ads.

“Not good for your health, Gurt.”

She let a stream of smoke drift from her nostrils and
once again he was reminded of the golden years of cinema. And lung cancer.

“Smoking is not as unhealthy as the business you were in when I last saw you.”

“Third Directorate, Intelligence?” Lang asked. “Biggest risk was getting poisoned by the food in the cafeteria.”

“Or dropping a girl like a hot . . . cabbage?”

“Potato.”

“Potato.” Those blue eyes were boring into his so hard that Lang looked away.

“I wish I could say I regretted it. I fell in serious love with Dawn.”

“And with me?”

“Just-as-serious lust.”

She took another puff and waited for the server to take their order before taking a new line. “If the people back at the embassy knew I was meeting with a former, er, employee who, I am sure, wants something, I’d go Tolstoy.”

Go Tolstoy, being required to fill reams of paper with details of anything that didn’t fit routine, usually filled with self-serving fiction.

The waiter reappeared with two glasses of Brunello. The dying sun reflected from the red wine to paint spots of blood on the tabletop while they watched people watching people. Rome’s favorite pastime. A battalion of Japanese followed their tour leader, a woman holding up a furled red umbrella like a battle flag. They broke ranks to photograph the magnificent Bernini marbles.

When her glass was half empty, Gurt spoke with a nonchalance so intensely casual Lang knew she had been straining not to ask before now. “You are divorced?”

“Not exactly.”

He explained about Dawn, only partially successful in trying to relate her death in an emotionless narrative.
Sometimes being a man isn’t easy. Gurt picked up on the still-sharp grief, her eyes shimmering. The Germans are a sentimental lot. SS guards who had joked while exterminating women and children in the morning wept at Wagner’s operas the same evening.

“I’m sorry, Lang,” she said, her voice husky with sympathy. “I truly am.”

She put a hand over his.

He made no effort to move it. “You never married?”

She gave a disdainful snort. “Marry who? You don’t meet the best people in this job. Only lunatics.”

“Could be worse,” Lang quipped. “What if you were working for the penal system?”

She brightened. “There is such a thing?”

“Corrections, Gurt, the U.S. prison system.”

“Oh.” She sighed her disappointment. “Well, my not getting married is not why you are here. I think you want something.”

He told her about Janet and Jeff and the man who had broken into his condo.

“Who are these people that would kill your sister and your nephew?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

They were quiet while the waiter refilled glasses.

When he departed, Lang took the copy of the Polaroid from a pocket and pushed it across the table. “If someone could tell me what the significance of this picture is, I might be on the way to finding the people responsible.”

She stared at the picture as though she were deciphering a code. “The police in the States, they cannot help?”

He retrieved the picture. “I don’t think so. Besides, this is personal.”

“You were with the Agency long enough to learn revenge is likely to get you killed.”

“Never said anything about revenge, just want to identify
these people. The cops can take it from there.”

“Uh-huh,” she said, not believing a word of it. “And how do you think I can help?”

“I need an introduction to a Guiedo Marcenni—a monk, I think. Anyway, he’s in the Vatican Museum. Who does the Agency know in the Vatican these days?”

Lang remembered the well-kept secret that the Vatican had its own intelligence service. The Curia, the body charged with following the Pope’s directives in the actual governance of the Church, maintained a cadre of information gatherers whose main functionaries were missionaries, parish priests or any other face the Church showed the public. Even though the service had not carried out a known assassination or violent (as opposed to political) sabotage since the Middle Ages, the very number of the world’s Roman Catholics, their loyalty and, most importantly, the sacrament of confession, garnered information unavailable to the spies of many nations. Like similar organizations, the Agency frequently swapped tidbits with the Holy See.

Gurt fished another cigarette from the pack. “And what am I to tell my superiors? Why do I want to introduce a former agent to this monk?”

Lang watched her light up and inhale. “Simply a favor for an old friend, a friend who has specific questions about a piece of art he wishes to ask on behalf of a client.”

“I will think about it.”

They ordered bean soup and eggplant sauteed in olive oil along with a full bottle of wine.

As they finished, Lang said, “Gurt, there’s something else you ought to know.”

She glanced up from the small mirror she was using to repair her lipstick. “That you are wanted by the American police? Close your mouth, it is most unattractive hanging open. I saw the bulletin this afternoon.”

One of the duties the Agency had assumed rather than face extinction upon the demise of its original enemy was cooperation with local authorities and Interpol in locating American fugitives abroad. The FBI, sensing a turf invasion, had protested loudly but futilely.

Lang felt his dinner lurch in his stomach. “You mean the Agency knows?”

She checked the result of her effort, turning her head to maximize the light supplied by tabletop candles. “I doubt it. The message was misfiled. The screw up won’t be discovered for a day or two.”

“But why . . . ?”

She dropped the mirror back into her bag. “I have known you a long time, Lang Reilly. A call from you after all those years made me alert. I did not think you would have called me unless you wanted something. Then I read the incoming and made a connection. I hunched right.”

Her mangling of the idiom did nothing to diminish his surprise. “But you could get fired. . . .”

She stood and stretched, a motion he guessed she knew emphasized shapely breasts. “You are an old friend, one of the
Komraden
. I have few of those.”