The Julian Secret

by Gregg Loomis

  The first thing the man did when he stepped into the alley was look in the direction away from Lang. Before he could turn his head the other way, Lang had an arm bent around the man's neck, the elbow directly under his chin so that equal pressure was brought on both carotid arteries. The effect was to starve the brain of blood while allowing oxygen to be sucked into otherwise empty capillaries, causing them to pop like balloons. In four or five seconds, the victim would be unconscious. In twenty, he would be dead.

  A trained hand-to-hand fighter would have immediately gone limp, thereby placing his weight against the attacker's arm and lessening the pressure. Instead, the man Lang held struggled briefly to pull the arm away, a near impossibility without substantial height advantage.

  In seconds, he was crumpled on the ground. A quick but thorough search of his pockets produced the cell phone without which no European can exist, keys, and a switchblade, which, when open, made a deadly dagger. His wallet held a few euros and a national ID card, which Lang slipped into his pocket along

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  with the phone. The knife he hurled into the gathering dark.

  A series of tortured coughs told Lang the man would soon be conscious. He would have liked to question him, but that was not going to happen. All the follower had to do was not speak English, or pretend not to, and interrogation would be impossible. Besides, remaining in an alley rapidly filling with nig-ht didn't seem like a good idea.

  He looked over his shoulder as he turned back onto the main street. Losing his corner, was he?

  Gurt was waiting for him in the hotel room. Her raised eyebrows asked the question.

  Lang gave a brief summary of what had happened, finishing with, "I don't know any more than before, but I do have a cell phone and an ID. I suppose it's possible he was just a criminal looking for a score."

  "Getting out of a car to follow us?"

  She was right, of course.

  "Can you think of anyone at the Agency who owes you a favor, can run this ID, maybe find out to whom the number of the cell phone is registered?"

  She stood to look out the window. "It is possible."

  The equivalent of a Social Security number in Europe would produce not only a credit history but everything from the names of relatives to the date and nature of the holder's last visit to his state-subsidized physician.

  Americans would find this intolerable. Fortunately, only a few were aware it was equally possible there. ''And also, see how we can find out to whom this cell phone number belongs."

  She cocked an annoyed eyebrow, clicked her heels, and gave him a Nazi salute. "Jawohl, Herr Gruppenfuhrer! Shall I also serve your dinner?"

  Maybe she had not forgotten as much of World War II as he had thought.

  He played it straight. "That won't be necessary. While you're calling favors due, I'm going to see if the hotel has a computer I can use, check out that CD."

  Despite its fourteenth-century Moorish appearance, the hotel had a business center equal to any similar facility in the United States. Lang showed his room key to the attractive young woman at the entrance, and she led him to a cubicle complete with computer and printer.

  "Will that be all?" she asked in almost accentless English.

  "Yes, er, no." Lang was looking at the keyboard. "I want to print out some photographs on this disk, but I don't read Spanish."

  She gave him a very professional smile, one he was sure she lavished on every dullard fortunate enough to be a guest here. "No problem. May I have the disk?"

  She inserted it into the computer, pressed a couple of buttons, and stepped back. "That should work. If you have a problem, let me know."

  Lang sat in front of the screen as the printer hummed. Why was it technology was less intimidating the younger you were?

  The black-and-white pictures were not quite as clear as he might have

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  hoped, either because they were not exactly focused or because of something in the process of transferring ordinary film images to a digital format. The computer had caught the sepia tone of old photographs. Most were different views of the classical facade of the same building, a structure Lang recognized as St. Peter's in Rome. One depicted a man in what might have been a black uniform, with what could have been part of the basilica as background. Lang studied the face. Perhaps mid-thirties, piercing eyes, and, most distinguishing, a scar across the right cheek. Lang looked closer. What was the insignia on the collar of his tunic?

  Too blurred to be certain. The other pictures seemed to have been taken at night or inside, and depicted the same man, this time in mufti, standing in front of a rock face on which barely distinguishable letters were carved.

  Lang stared at the man for a long time. His face was ... familiar?

  Impossible. Lang was certain he had never seen the guy before, yet there was something recognizable about him. Perhaps a movie star or other celebrity of years past whose picture Lang had seen?

  Hadn't the inspector said the pictures were sixty or so years old? How did he know? The next photo answered the question. In this one, the man's uniform was clearly visible and distinguishable from civilian clothes. He stood in front of the building. Lang looked closer. His attire was either black or very dark, perhaps navy. On the high collar was some sort of ... Lang held the paper inches from his face and recognized the stylized lightning bolts of the SS, the elite of the Nazi military.

  That made sense, Lang supposed, since Don had been writing about some long-dead Nazi. But why would photographs that old be worth killing for, particularly pictures that looked like those some soldier might have had made to send home like any other tourist?

  He turned off the computer and headed back to the room.

  Gurt was watching what appeared to be a Spanish soap on the room's TV. A man with sideburns that would have rivaled Elvis's was shouting something at a sobbing woman. It was the first time he had seen her watch television.

  "I didn't know you spoke Spanish," Lang said. "I don't, but the story on these programs is much the same everywhere." Apparently, she was more of a television watcher than she admitted. Lang put the envelope with the disk in it on the room's desk. "Any luck getting a line on our friend?"

  Gurt aimed the remote at the TV. It clicked off. "Luck? No. I intended to get the information. The man is a little-time criminal, has attended prison for purse snatching, picking pockets, that sort of thing. He has been out less than a month."

  "And the cell phone?"

  "Someone else's, stolen."

  Something Spain and the United States had in common: the effectiveness of the corrective function of their respective penal systems.

  Lang sat down on the bed. "Penny-ante crooks can't afford automobiles in Europe. Unless those two stole the one they got out of, somebody hired them to

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  follow us. Or worse."

  "Or they wanted to scare us away."

  Lang hadn't considered that possibility. "From what?"

  Gurt glanced at her purse, no doubt wondering how much grief she'd get if she lit another cigarette. "From whatever they think we are doing. Or whatever they think we might find among your friend's papers."

  They looked at each other without speaking for a full minute before Gurt broke the silence. "That knife. He could have intended to kill you."

  "And the one that followed you?"

  "Ion the lighted streets remained. He had no chance to harm me before I walked the two or three blocks back here."

  Another pause. Gurt decided to risk it. She pulled her cigarettes out of the purse. "Lang, what are we doing?"

  "I'm not sure I understand the question. What you are doing is setting yourself up for cancer, emphysema, and tobacco-stained teeth."

  Like her favorite fictional character, Scarlett O'Hara, Gurt apparently decided she would worry about that tomorrow. "I mean, why are we getting involved in this? Huff may have been a friend, but he was not close. I never heard you mention him before the other day. Besides, what
cap. we do the police cannot?"

  As usual, she had looked right in and seen his soul. Or at least part of it. The truth that Lang really didn't want to admit to himself or Gurt was that he had gotten bored. You could defend only so many wealthy embezzlers, stock manipulators, and flimflam artists before they all became the same. Likewise, the ever-growing list of mendicants seeking funds from the foundation were assuming a tedious similarity.

  Last year, he had set out to find the killers of his sister and nephew. It had very nearly cost him his life as well. But he had succeeded where the local authorities had failed, and the danger inherent in the enterprise had been exhilarating.

  Settling a score for a man who had saved Lang's life was only part of the reason.

  And Gurt knew it.

  Sometimes he thought he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her only because he dared not have someone who knew him that well on the loose.

  "I care more than the police, and I owe it to Don."

  Gurt shrugged, not buying it but not willing to argue, either. "As you say. Now what?"

  Lang looked at his watch. "We still have a couple of hours before dinnertime-Spanish dinnertime, anyway. I'd like to go back to Don's house, where I can spread out these papers the inspector gave back to us. r d also like to take another look at those index cards."

  It took less than five minutes to walk to the house on

  Calle Colon. As far as either could tell, no one followed.

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  "Who is it?" Jessica's voice came through the speaker at the street entrance. "So, what did you find out at the police station?" she asked as soon as the gates swung open.

  "That they don't know zip," Lang said.

  "And our help they don't want," Gurt added.

  The iron gates closed behind them.

  "The inspector, a guy named Mendezo, gave us the CD and the papers he took." He handed her the box with the papers. "I'd like to keep the disk." She led the way into the house. "Sure. Did you have a chance to download the pictures?" By unspoken consent, they sat in the same chairs they had that morning.

  Lang produced another envelope, this one bulging. "I printed them out. Take a look and see if they mean anything to you."

  After Jessica had studied each one, she put them back in the envelope.

  "Just an old building with some guy in a uniform standing in front. I have no idea what Dad was going to do with them."

  Disappointed but not surprised, Lang stood. "In your dad's office or work area, there was a little metal box of index cards. Could we go take another look?"

  Jessica also stood. "Sure."

  Once back in Don's office, Gurt and Lang divided the cards, A-M, N-Z. They were as enigmatic as before: names, some with addresses and phone numbers. They began reading the names out loud. To each, Jessica shook her head.

  "Blake, David. Looks like New York," Lang said, holding up a card.

  Again Jessica shook her head. "Never heard of him."

  "Blucher, Franz. Heidelberg."

  "Him either."

  Lang held the card closer to the tight to read the notation at the bottom.

  "Skorzeny?"

  She shook her head, then stopped. "Say that again?"

  "Skor-zain-nee." Lang pronounced the word slowly.

  "That's him!"

  She had both Lang's and Gurt's attention. "Who?" they asked in unison.

  "The man Dad was writing about. One of them, anyway. He was a German, some kinda big deal in the war."

  "What about Blucher, Franz?" Lang wanted to know. Again Jessica shook her head. "Still never heard of him."

  Gurt moved to look over Lang's shoulder. "Lang, you said you used cards like that in high school to write papers, put separate facts on each one."

  Lang didn't remember telling her, but obviously he had. ''Yes, I did. It was before computers made note cards obsolete."

  "Suppose your friend Don did his research the same way." Lang had no idea where she was going. "Okay, let's assume he did."

  "What if ..." She went to her stack of cards and extracted one, reading

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  from it. " 'Skorzeny, Otto.' At the bottom, it says, 'Blucher, Franz.' The reverse of your card, cross-referencing. Suppose this Blucher was Dan's authority for whatever he was writing about Skorzeny?"

  "Or the other way 'round," Lang said.

  This time it was Gurt who shook her head. "I think not. Jessica says he was writing about Skorzeny. Besides, there's no address for Skorzeny."

  It made sense. .

  Or at least as much sense as anything else.

  "Okay. Would you please call the number on the card?"

  Gurt returned the card to the box. "This is your show, Lang. You call."

  "Last time I looked, Heidelberg was in Germany. I seem to remember something about you speaking the language."

  Gurt sighed theatrically, giving Jessica the same expression she gave Lang when he did something stupid around the house. Like putting laundry detergent in the dishwasher, resulting in a wall of suds taking over the kitchen.

  The sort of thing any undomesticated man might do.

  Jessica pointed. "There's the phone."

  Instead, Gurt fished a cell phone from her bag. Lang recognized it as Agency issue, capable of operating on all but the polar continents. Lang watched as she punched in the three-digit country code and the number. After what he guessed were three or four rings, she gave Don's name, hers, her number, and a request her call be returned. Obviously, Herr Blucher was not in or not answering.

  Gurt returned the device to her purse. "What now?"

  Lang pointed to the packet of papers the police had returned. "I guess we divide those up and see what we can find."

  In less than a minute, Jessica looked up. "These are just lists of stuff. Here's a list of books, and this one's got places on it. Makes no sense."

  Lang was already beginning to agree. "This one has only one word on it: Montsegur."

  Gurt put her papers down. "That's in France, the Languedoc. I saw a road sign with that on it when we were ... when we were there last year."

  She and Lang exchanged looks. It had been in the southwest of France that Lang had first confronted the powerful Pegasus organization in the search for the killers of his sister and nephew. The encounter had been very near fatal. It was a region to which he was not eager to return.

  Before he could reply, his cell phone chirped. There were only three people who had the number, and two of them were present.

  "Yes, Sara?" Lang asked while calculating it was four 0'clock in the afternoon back in Atlanta.

  The voice was as clear as though it were crossing a room rather than an ocean. "Judge Henderson's put Wiley on next month's trial calendar. Thought you'd like to know."

  Lang groaned. Wiley was the civil counterpart to Lang's criminal defense

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  of the originator of a multitiered sales/ financial services scam. Not only was the U.S. Justice Department prosecuting Lang's client for a laundry list of security violations, the SEC was suing to regain investors' money. Mr. Wiley had already been forced to sell his vintage Ferrari and one of his Rolls Royces just to continue his lavish lifestyle. An adverse verdict in the civil case would bankrupt him. Worse, he would be unable to pay the rest of his lawyer's fees. The complexity of the case would require Lang's attention every day between now and the time Mr. Wiley faced a jury of his peers.

  Lang snapped the phone shut. "Jessica, I'm afraid something's come up back home. We, Gurt and I, need to leave immediately." He noted the look on her face, that of someone about to lose their last friend. "We can keep trying to contact this guy in Heidelberg. When I finish what I've got to do, I'll be in touch to see if the local cops have made any progress."

  From her appearance, Jessica wasn't comforted, but she gamely extended a hand. "I can't thank you enough for coming all the way to Spain to help."

  Lang shook. "I couldn't do enough for your dad. He saved my life. I'l
l be back if you need me."

  Lang left with the dissatisfaction of a job not completed.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Southwest France

  Montsegur

  September 1940

  Only ropes and pitons hammered-into crevices had allowed the men to climb the mountain's north face. Even so, it had taken over seven hours. All five were close to exhaustion. Had they been mere sport climbers, they would have savored the water in their canteens, smoked a cigarette, and admired the view their efforts had given them.