The Julian Secret

by Gregg Loomis

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  "No, you hold it!" The voice came from Lang's left, Reavers's right. A very definitely feminine voice. "And moving those lights you should not consider even!"

  Lang thought he was seeing some sort of wraith, perhaps one of those Roman spirits he'd thought about minutes ago. But ghosts, particularly those of Romans, probably didn't wear nuns habits as did this one. Tall, her face hidden by the shadow of her wimple, she stood at an angle where she could clearly see Reavers and his two men without being blinded by the light. Lang could see only the top half of her body. The rest was in shadows, giving the impression she was somehow floating in air.

  Reavers froze, turning only his head. "Now look, Sister, you got no dog in this fight an' there's no reason for you to get hurt. You jus' mosey on back to where you came from, an' everthing'll be just hunky-dory."

  She didn't move. "Down drop your weapons and put hands high. Now!"

  It was a ghost! Lang knew that voice, that inflection, even the choice of words.

  Reavers came to the same conclusion. Or at least a similar one. "Fuchs, the Kraut bitch! That idiot I sent to the hospital ..."

  Reavers complaining how hard it is to get good help.

  He spun, raising the Sig Sauer.

  It was a big mistake, the last one he would ever make.

  From somewhere beneath the floating head, a quick jet of flame leaped into the darkness and there was the sound like someone clearing their throat, a weapon with sound suppressor.

  To Lang, everything seemed to move at a sluggish pace, to take on the tempo of a film in slow motion.

  Reavers stood on tiptoe and did a graceful pirouette that belied both his size and the fact that he was wearing boots instead of ballet slippers. The anger in his facial expression was replaced by one of astonishment as his eyes crossed at his nose as though trying to see the grayish-red hole between them.

  Just as Reavers's knees buckled, Lang was on him, snatching the gun from his limp grasp before diving into the shadows.

  Lang crashed into unforgiving masonry.

  It went dark.

  A darkness of centuries, the gloom of the pre-creation universe, a night so black it could be felt as well as seen.

  It also was very, very quiet.

  The quiet of the tomb, Lang thought, suppressing a post-traumatic giggle at his own wit.

  Seconds, minutes, hours, could have passed before a man spoke. "Okay, we got us a Mexican standoff here. We go out and then you do. Nobody else get hurt."

  There was too much of an echo in the enclosed space to be sure as to the source of the voice, but it came from close by.

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  Lang started to reply, thought better of it, and said nothing. No point in speaking even if the acoustics would make it difficult to trace the sound. There was about as much chance Reavers's clique would simply walk away from the power of having a U.S. president under their control as there was the Agency would agree to be funded solely by the sale of Girl Scout cookies.

  "We got a deal?" the man wanted to know.

  This time Lang did speak. "Sure. You turn on your light so we can make sure you're leaving."

  Pause, then: "Damn thing's broken."

  Right.

  Lang thought he had an idea as to the general position of the speaker. Reaching into the void with the hand that didn't have Reavers's gun in it, he touched a wall. Feeling his way upward, he came to an opening, one of the many windows that made these tombs look so much like the very houses the deceased had occupied in life. He moved up to his knees and considered his position.

  The streets were narrow, with few places to cross onto parallel lanes. The tombs all opened the same way and were closed on the other three sides. It was almost certain, then, that Reavers's men were facing the same way he was. Since he had been at the top of the hill, or near it, the two gunmen had to be slightly below. The problem was, he was unsure of where Gurt was. He could only hope she, also, was on the same street and, therefore, looking out in the same direction.

  "We're waiting," came the same voice. "No point in anyone else getting killed." Lang hoped it was not mere optimism that detected an edge to the tone, one of mounting desperation.

  He stuck the Sig Sauer in the waistband of his trousers and crawled around the interior of the tomb, feeling as he went. Halfway up the rear wall, his fingers found a niche. Further exploration 'discovered a form with irregular features. Sitting in the darkness, Lang used both hands to touch his find. A funeral bust, the head and shoulder of some rich Roman.

  Holding the statue in his arms, he crawled back to where he recalled the entrance was and into the street. Sharp rocks, crumbs of jagged marble, and roughly edged cobblestones bit into his knees and elbows as he crossed to the other side and groped for the top of the structure. Again running his hand along the top edge, he ascertained it was fairly smooth, although he had no way of knowing whether the adjacent downhill sepulchre was taller, shorter, or the same height. His memory told him each mausoleum had its own individual form.

  He stood the bust on the wall and retreated back into the tomb.

  He was almost certain the two men had been carrying some sort of automatic weapons. It took extraordinary discipline in a firefight to put guns like that on single-round fire. He was counting on the fact that these men would not even think twice about spraying bullets at any target.

  He gave the closest thing he knew to a prayer that Gurt was both alert

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  and watching in this direction. He yelled, "Gurt, go for it!" knowing she would recognize the ruse.

  At the same instant, he flicked the flashlight on and off, illuminating the bust. Ordinarily, marble would not be mistaken for flesh and blood. Likely it wouldn't this time, either. But the impenetrable darkness, tense nerves, and the lightning-like flicker that robbed color from whatever it touched might, just might

  ...

  The reaction was instantaneous. Before Lang regained the shelter of the tomb, two geysers of ragged flame spouted from a tomb, almost next to Lang's like laterally held Roman candles. Although large, the necropolis's cover made the sound deafening, a single stream of explosions that beat against Lang's eardrums like fists, beat so hard as to be painful. He could clearly hear the splatter of fragments of stone and plaster as they pelted the outer wall of his sanctuary.

  He couldn't duck completely out of sight, though. He had to see ... See and hold on to the flashlight, which he stuck into his belt.

  Before the first long bursts of two automatic weapons had ceased their clatter, a smaller streak of fire came from somewhere across the street. One of the automatics' muzzle flash traced an arc upward and went dark.

  One down, one to go.

  The shooters had been so close, Lang could smell the acrid stench. of burned 'cordite. He had been lucky the men had been too intent on escape to hear his foray into the street.

  His ears ringing from gunfire, Lang now could hear only his own heartbeat, a sound so loud he was surprised the man right down the street couldn't hear it, too.

  Lang had marked the source of enemy fire, although the darkness prevented an exact measurement. He guessed fifteen feet, twenty at the most. Reavers's pistol in hand, he began a hands-and-knees approach to a spot in the curtain of black where he estimated his enemy might be.

  In a couple of minutes, Lang calculated he was in front of the building that housed the remaining gunman. He held his breath, the better to hear the other man's, but silence alone greeted the effort. He knew he couldn't stay here, exposed in the street. Another burst of gunfire or the sweep of a flashlight would reveal his position.

  His outstretched hand touched a number of pebbles. Shifting the gun to his left, he picked up the small stones, rolled them in the palm. of his hand for a second, and threw them in the direction of the gunman.

  This time the man didn't fire. But he did move, a clear scraping sound as his feet knocked over rocks in the darkness.

  Quickly switching hands, Lan
g fired two shots in the general direction of the sound as he swiftly rolled across the cobblestones. .

  As anticipated, automatic fire churned the street-where Lang had been. A short burst, but enough. Two more flashes of light, from somewhere across the

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  road, a scream that sounded like it came from only a few feet away, and all was silent again, the quiet after the blast of gunfire seeming to have a physical weight of its own.

  Lang felt the wall of something, a tomb or other structure, and slowly stood, pressing against the coolness of the stone. He fumbled at his belt and removed the light. Inching along the wall until he felt the opening, he held the Sig Sauer in his right hand, the light in his left. Pointing the gun into the darkness, he pushed the button on the light.

  Even in the puny beam given by a shattered lens and cracked bulb, he could see the fight was over. One man stared into eternity with blank eyes; wherever he had been hit, death had been instantaneous, as there was no blood visible. The other sat stiff-legged in a red puddle against the rear wall of the little house, his hands uselessly trying to staunch the flow of crimson from his throat. He didn't look up as Lang stepped over and kicked away the M16 automatic rifle, thankful Reavers had not added nightscopes.

  The man gave a final sound, a noise like a gargle, and slumped to his side. No breath was visible.

  ''You are glad to see me, Liebchen, no?" Gurt was right behind him. "Or is that a gun in your pocket?"

  The old Mae West line was one of her favorites.

  He turned to embrace her. "Frankly, my dear, I couldn't give more of a damn, Rhett Butler notwithstanding. You have no idea ..."

  She gently pushed him away. "Later. Right now, we must leave this place. Someone could have the gunfire heard."

  Lang thought of the pressurized, climate-controlled part of the necropolis open to a limited segment of the population. "Possible, but I'd say the insulation was enough to quiet an A-bomb."

  Gurt's eyes flickered around the small area lit by their flashlights. "Abomb? No one has-"

  He put a finger to her lips. "You're right. Later."

  She swept the beam of her light over the two dead men. "And these?"

  "They're already in a cemetery. What's the point of having them moved to another?"

  She turned her head to peer up the slope. "And Reavers?"

  "Him, too. Let the Agency figure out where he disappeared."

  He went back to the top to retrieve his cassock.

  Minutes later, a priest and a tall nun were walking away from St. Peter's Square. There was nothing particularly unusual about either. Unless the careful observer watched them long enough to note that they seemed to touch a great deal more than decorum would require.

  And they laughed incessantly.

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  FORTY-SEVEN

  The Amalfi Coast, Ravello

  Hotel Palumbo

  Two days later

  Most of the roads carved into the mountains of Italy's Amalfi Coast are one and a half car widths wide, a measurement dating back to a time when bicycles were the norm and tiny, shoebox-sized automobiles navigated the hairpin turns with a sense of adventure, if not complacency. Today, buses crammed with increasing numbers of tourists stretch from the stone walls on the seaward side of the road to the sheer rock on the other. Other traffic seeks such nooks and crannies as they can find until the behemoths squeeze past with a cheery honk of the horn and a puff of foul-smelling diesel smoke.

  The few streets in Ravello are too narrow even for this accommodation. Anything larger than a compact risks leaving body parts in front of someone's door.

  That was why Lang had chosen this place. There was nothing remarkable about the old stone buildings along the Via S. Giovanni del Toro other than interesting examples of Moorish influence in the Mediterranean. The sign announcing the hotel was small, evidencing management's hopes that only those aware of its presence would notice; that new, possibly American, clientele would seek the hospitality of the other hotel, the one that catered to American film and TV stars, on the hill on the other side of town.

  That, of course, was exactly why Lang had chosen the Palumbo.

  Unimpressive if not downright plain from the street, the lobby usually caused first-time visitors (if they could not be encouraged to go elsewhere) to stop, stare, and mutter whatever translated as "My God!" in their native language.

  Two stories of glass looked straight across a gorge at the misty cliffs that lined a golden beach hundreds of feet below. In the distance, fishing boats bobbed in cobalt-blue waters like so many gaily colored corks. The staff was quiet, unobtrusive, and usually invisible unless summoned.

  Lang had reserved a room just off the lobby with much the same view. He and Gurt lapsed into a routine of early-morning walks, midday swims in the hotel's infinity-edged pool, lunch at one of the town's one or two trattoria, and frantic lovemaking in the afternoons before a nap.

  Eschewing the hotel's barrel-vaulted, frescoed dining room, each evening they dined at a small ristoranteon one of the two narrow streets that forked off the one in front of the church. Like most such establishments, the place was lit like a surgical theater. Lang theorized that Italians liked to make sure they got what they paid for rather than risk less expensive substitution in a dimmer, more romantically lighted place. Gurt suggested the unfortunate medieval habit of disposing of one's dinner guests by poison was the source of the custom.

  Either way, the place was run by an elderly woman who commanded her

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  eatery like the captain of a ship. Each night, shoeless, she circulated among her guests, demanding an explanation for any remaining scrap.

  After the third dinner there, Lang and Gurt were walking up an incline made steeper by the FioridiZucca e CarciofiFritti he had had along with his Saltimbocca alia Romana in his stomach.

  He stopped on the piazza, a small square with a gelaterieand a seller of dubious antiques on one side, the church adjoining on the other, and two sides open. "Okay, how did you know?"

  The events in the necropolis had not been discussed, but had been avoided like an unpleasant subject everyone knows will have to be thrashed out at some point

  Gurt, in the pencil-legged leather pants and peasant blouse favored by younger Italian women, thought a moment. Then she took his arm and guided him back uphill toward the hotel. She told him what had happened, or what she remembered of it, of the hospital and her memory and hearing loss.

  "It was the piece of torn-off ticket ..."

  "Stub," he said, "a ticket stub."

  "The ticket stub, then," she said. "It brought it all back: being in Frankfurt, the Agency. Also, if this man who tried to kill me had such a ticket from the Frankfurt U-Bahn, he had been in Frankfurt. If he had come out of there, the chances were the Agency was somehow mixed in it. Why would anyone else want me dead? I would have called to warn you, but my Agency phone was lost in the explosion. Besides, if the Agency was involved, they would be listening to any conversation you had."

  Lang pulled open the door to the hotel to let her enter. "Good thing. What the bastard gave me wasn't just a secure phone, it was a tracking device."

  "And I suppose that if I had called Sara ..."

  "That line was probably bugged."

  She looked at him curiously. "Like the roaches we see in Atlanta?"

  "It had a listening device. They would have heard anything you said."

  He stopped, looking back down the hill. The piazza was obscured by treetops. "What about Die Spinne, some organization to protect old Nazis? Did you ever consider that?"

  She pulled him forward. "You were the only one who ever saw Nazis on every bed."

  "Under every bed. You're right. You and Blucher didn't think much of my theory."

  This time it was Gurt who stopped. Even in the dim light from the lobby, he could see her exaggerated expression of surprise. ''Ach! The dumb woman has right once?'"

  He grinned good-naturedly. "The dumb wo
man who saved my ass again." She winked mischievously. "It is not your ass I wish to save."

  They crossed the threshold and started toward their room, in silence for a moment before he asked, "The necropolis under the Vatican-how did you know?"

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  She thought for a moment, either trying to get the English phraseology right or deciding exactly what to say. By now, they were outside the room.

  He put the key in the lock but blocked her entrance.

  "Well?"

  Again the sly smile. "Would you believe women's intuition?"

  "No."

  She sighed theatrically. "Very well, deprive from me the illus ... illus . . ."