The Pegasus Secret (28 page)

EDFA, the Agency’s acronym for “Educate yourself as to the problem, Decide upon the desired result, Formulate the plan most likely to achieve that result, Act.”

Sure. Nothing is impossible for he who doesn’t have to do it.

Lang had only part of the information he needed. He knew that an organization, possibly of historic origin, certainly of vast economic power, wanted him dead, dead like Jeff and Janet. The desired result was to make the bastards wish they had never heard of Lang Reilly: a payback of cosmic proportions.

And Lang still hadn’t done the hard part, formulating a plan. Time to go back to the “educate” stage and start over. Without understanding Pegasus, he would never be able to put a hurt on it. To learn if Pegasus really was somehow connected to the Templars.

Pretty heavy stuff.

Lang had never been particularly religious, probably because as a child he had been dragged out of bed every Sunday morning and forced to spend an hour on the most
uncomfortable pew that ever existed in the entire Episcopal Church. Admittedly, he was a little old still to be rebelling. Even in the hours spent in involuntary worship, he didn’t remember ever hearing about Jesus being married, let alone surviving the crucifixion like that Lobineau guy Dr. Wolffe mentioned in one of his footnotes.

Medieval religious orders in the twenty-first century? Pretty bogus.

Education.

So far, more questions than answers.

Like, how had They known to come to Jacob’s flat? Lang was all but positive he hadn’t been followed to the Temple Bar or from Oxford. But if not followed, how? What was it Sherlock Holmes said? Something like, “If you eliminate all possible solutions, only the impossible remains.” Impossible someone had discovered his relationship with Jacob through his service records. Impossible.

Therefore the answer?

Lang had been thinking along those lines already when he decided to renew another old acquaintance, one who wouldn’t be in any service file.

Lang checked his watch as he climbed up the steps to street level. Quarter after nine, just after four in Atlanta. When he had called the office from Rome, Sara had referred to Chen, the client Lang had called from the pay phone downstairs in his building. With the cops in the office, she hadn’t been able to expressly mention the pay phone but that would have been the only reason to name a client from four or five years ago.

From a public phone in the station, he made a collect call, a somewhat easier job than it would have been through an Italian-speaking operator. He assumed there was a tap on the office phone, so he made the call brief.

“Sara, remember Mr. Chen?” he asked. And hung up.

If they could trace that, technology had really improved
more than he thought. Star-69, of course, didn’t work with international calls. By the time computer records of calls to his office could be searched, he could go around the world on a very slow boat.

He switched phones and used Herr Schneller’s Visa card to charge the call. Happily, Gurt hadn’t terminated his credit quite yet. Lang was hoping he remembered the right phone number in the office building, that he wasn’t calling the deli across the lobby.

“Lang?”

Sara’s voice could have been an angel’s, he was so happy to hear it.

“It’s me. You okay?”

“Fine now. I thought that detective was going to bring his toothbrush and move into the office, much time as he spent there. What about you? I understand you’ve been accused of a murder in London as well as the one here.”

“To paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports are much exaggerated. Listen, I can’t talk long. Call the priest, ask him to stand by tonight. I need to speak with him.”

“You mean Father . . .”

“No names!” Lang almost shouted with a harshness he regretted. He could imagine Echelon’s programming listening for names of his current friends. Unlikely but possible. “This call is being transmitted by satellite. It isn’t secure.”

Sara was willing to take his word for it. “I’ll alert him. And Lang . . . I know you didn’t kill anybody.”

Lang had a vision of two bodies lying in the street, one with two bullets he had fired. “Thanks, Sara. It’ll all work out.

Lang hoped he sounded more confident than he felt.

London, Piccadilly
1740 hours

Cloaked in Piccadilly’s evening crowd, Lang stopped to look at window displays every few feet. He didn’t see any faces reflected more than once. He circled the block delineated by Regent Street and Jermyn Street twice, pausing to examine an equestrian stature of William of Orange apparently in the dress of a Roman emperor. Despite his problems, Lang smiled. The king in drag. Before the royal scandals of the late nineties—Di, Fergie, the lot—the English took their monarchs way too seriously.

Lang still recognized no faces from a few minutes earlier.

He checked his watch and hurried along like a man suddenly realizing his wife is waiting at dinner or the theater. At 47 Jermyn, he stopped at an unmarked door. A column of names and bell buttons were to the left next to the
rusted grille of a speaker. Lang had to squint to see the names. He was in luck; she was still here.

When he pressed a button, a woman’s voice, tinny over the wire but Cockney accent nevertheless clear, replied, “ ’Oo’s there?”

Lang leaned close to the speaker, both not wanting to be overheard by people on the street but to be sure to be understood by the voice at the other end. “Tell Nellie an old friend, the one who looked but didn’t touch.”

The speaker clicked off.

Nellie O’Dwyer, formerly Neleska Dwvorsik, had been the madam of one of London’s more exclusive call-girl rings since before Lang had known her. Although prostitution was technically illegal, the Brits were smart enough not to waste time and money battling a business no government had ever completely suppressed. As long as Nellie’s girls caused no complaints, she was left alone to operate her “escort” service.

Once safely out of some East European workers’ paradise, a significant number of defectors’ first wish was a woman. Whisky came in a distant second. A relaxed and happy man was a lot easier to debrief than one tense and resentful. When Lang had first been stationed in London, it had fallen his lot as low man on the pole to find a regular source to satisfy the need. The item was creatively entered under “counseling” in the expense accounts that were subject to Congressional oversight.

It was unlikely this service to his country appeared in Lang’s service jacket. If somebody had his file, he doubted they would see Nellie’s name in it.

As one formerly accustomed to the machinations of Marxist-Leninist states, Nellie had expected Lang to demand a percentage, or at least a sample of the goods. It didn’t take a genius to see the downside of being a partner—or a customer—of a brothel keeper. Not smart when
employed by a nation with Ozzie and Harriet morality.

Instead, Lang had thanked Nellie for what she had perceived as generosity, even if it would have been at her girls’ expense. “I’ll just look and not touch,” he had said.

The phrase had become a joke in more languages than Lang cared to count, as scantily-clad women repeated it in accented English every time he came to pick up a “date” for the Agency’s most recent acquisition.

Nellie still thought it was funny. Her voice squealed with an enthusiasm little diminished by the age of the electronics. “Lang! You have come back to your Nellie!” There was a buzz and the bolt clicked back. Lang swung the door open as Nellie’s voice commanded, “You come up here right this minute!”

He could only hope Nellie and her girls were too busy to pay attention to the news on the telly, or at least not enough to have seen him on it. As he climbed the wooden stairs, his fingers closed around the Beretta still in his belt.

What if Pegasus had learned about Jacob through some means other than his records? Would they also know about Nellie? Lang glanced back down the stairs at the only escape route. Once he stepped into Nellie’s parlor, even that would be closed.

If They were waiting for him . . .

London, South Dock

By the time Jacob and Gurt exited the elevator of his apartment building, blue lights were swirling through the night. Without exchanging a word, they shoved through the growing circle of people. Four uniformed constables, their faces towards the crowd, kept the inquisitive at a distance from where two men in suits were kneeling beside two
bodies on the sidewalk. A third was writing in a notebook as an elderly woman spoke.

Gurt strained to hear. “. . . One man ran away . . . too dark . . . looked out the window soon’s I rang up the police.”

Gurt turned her attention to the two forms sprawled on the pavement. The closest to her was far too bulky to be Lang. The other was facedown. Damning the morbidly curious who were blocking her view, she pushed to one side.

“Look ’ere . . .” a man growled over his shoulder. He turned, took in her size and expression, and got out of her way without regard to how many of his fellow spectators had to be jostled.

The taste of blood surprised Gurt. She had no idea how hard she had been biting her lip. She had had no chance to see the bodies before that policeman had accosted her, sending her back to Jacob’s apartment before he could see how upset she was. She had been in torment until she could get back outside, see for herself. Damn Lang Reilly! Leaving her without so much as a good-bye when he obviously needed help. Serve him right if that were him there. She lifted her eyes for an instant. No, she didn’t really mean that.
Please don’t let that body be his
.

“Not him,” Jacob whispered at her elbow, startling her. She hadn’t realized he had followed in the wake she had left in the crowd like a passing ship. “Neither one of ’em.”

“How can you be sure?” she asked quietly.

“Those are the pair that came to my flat looking for him, the ones you doubt were the police. Looks like they caught up with him, after all.”

Gurt had not been aware she had been holding her breath. “Gott sei danke!” she muttered in an uncharacteristic lapse into German.

She was equally thankful she was not viewing the mortal remains of Langford Reilly and shocked at the thought
he could have killed anybody. Lang had taken the Agency’s training in self-defense, even learned to kill, but he definitely was not the lethal type. He was a wiseass, not an assassin.

“We need to find him,” she said, turning away from the corpses. “Any ideas?”

Jacob was patting his pockets, no doubt searching for the pipe he had left in his apartment. “No more than I had a few minutes ago. I’m afraid.”

Gurt closed her eyes, a gesture several bystanders mistook for a horrified reaction to Americanlike violence on the streets. Shit. She had left her cigarettes in her purse in Jacob’s flat. If ever she could have used a Marlboro . . .

London, Piccadilly

The door at the top of Nellie’s stairs opened into what could have been the lobby of a tourist-class hotel: unmatched chairs scattered in view of a cheap television set, a certain worn quality to the few end tables, magazines carelessly tossed about. The girls were the ones who relaxed here. Customers rarely saw the room.

Had the place been done in antiques, the furniture still wouldn’t have gotten Lang’s first attention. Young women, most in their teens or early twenties, lounged. Every skin color the world had to offer was on display with a minimum of cover. Most wore short pajamas or bra and panties. A few were done up in more exotic garb such as embroidered kimonos or shifts in vibrant African colors. Nellie’s inventory reflected the ethnic diversity London embraced.

None of them gave Lang more than a bored glance. Nothing like being ignored by a roomful of partially dressed women to shrink the old ego.

Nellie emerged from a hallway opposite from him, squinting at Herr Schneller’s moustache and jowls. They inspected each other as warily as a couple of dogs meeting on the street. Lang was surprised she looked pretty much the same as he remembered. Not a thread of silver streaked the blue-black hair that seemed to sparkle with green and amber like a crow’s wing in the sun. Her face was smooth, devoid of the little wrinkles years try to sneak by. Her chin was sharp, unblunted by the wattles of age. Her only concession to the passage of time was a dress that reached her knees, instead of the microskirts Lang remembered. Even so, her calves were slender, well-turned and without the mapping of varicose veins.

Her important parts had defied gravity as well as old age.

Lang took her gently in his arms and planted a wet one on her cheek. “You’re still a young girl, Nellie.”

She displayed teeth that must have put at least one orthodontist’s kids through university. “You compliment both me and my unbelievably expensive plastic surgeon.”

There was still a trace of the Balkans in her voice. She cocked her head, leaned back and regarded him like a specimen in a jar. “But you . . . you don’t look the same.”