The Julian secret lr-2

by Gregg Loomis

  "I suppose the line can be, er, slender," Blucher said. "In 1944, Hitler sent Skorzeny to seize the Citadel of Budapest. The Russians were preparing to invade Hungary, and the Hungarians had been allies of the Germans. Now they wanted to make a separate peace. Hitler couldn't have a Russian ally on his doorstep, so he sent Skorzeny to capture Admiral Miklos Horthy, Hungary's leader, and the whole Hungarian cabinet. With Just a few 55 troops, Skorzeny overthrew the legitimate government of the country, replacing it with a puppet one."

  "Impressive," Lang said, thinking of too many similarities. The old switch-governments trick had been pulled off more than once by his former employers. "But criminal in the context of war?"

  "Perhaps, perhaps not," the professor conceded. "In December of 1944 in the Ardennes-the Bulge, I think you Americans called the battle-Skorzeny rounded up several hundred idiomatic-American-speaking Germans, dressed them in U.S. army uniforms, and infiltrated American lines."

  "They would have been shot as spies," Lang said.

  "But hardly criminal."

  The professor smiled weakly. "You would have been right had not Skorzeny's men taken over a hundred prisoners, bound them, and shot them in the back, a crime even greater than the theft of every bit of art or treasure he found in Hungary."

  "So," Lang wanted to know, "why wasn't he tried for that?" The old man gave a shrug. "After the war, he disappeared, simply ceased to exist. A few years later, he resurfaced in Spain, under Franco's protection, helped reorganize his army."

  Lang got up to look over the professor's shoulder. Once again he had a feeling of deja vu, a sense of having seen that face before the photographs. "If the Allies knew he was there, why not force Franco to give him up? I'm sure we had extradition treaties with Spain."

  Blucher grinned slightly. ''You speak like a lawyer."

  "I am a lawyer."

  The old man gave Gurt a wink. "I am lost. I have entrusted myself to a lawyer."

  Lawyer-bashing, now an international sport.

  Blucher stood. "Why Skorzeny was not taken from Spain is a good question, Herr Reilly. I have some material at home you will find most interesting. It is getting late. Perhaps we can still meet at the castle tomorrow? I'll bring it then."

  "Why not just meet here again?" Gurt asked. "This suite is more secure than the ruins of a castle."

  "True," Blucher admitted, "but in daylight, I feel safer surrounded with people."

  "Let me call you a cab," Lang volunteered, reaching for the room's phone. "Write down your address so I can give it to the driver."

  Blucher complied without protest. In a few minutes, he was gone.

  Lang looked at Gurt, puzzled. "If it's not some Nazi group, skinheads, or something, who cares if there's a book published about people who've been dead for years?"

  Gurt stubbed out her cigarette. "Perhaps no one. Perhaps it is other information the book contains, as the old man suggests."

  "But what?"

  She was reaching behind herself to unbutton her blouse, a move that thrust her breasts forward. Lang watched, spellbound, before he realized she had asked a question.

  "I suppose we'll know tomorrow."

  Gurt folded the blouse neatly and stepped out of her skirt. Although he had seen the performance nightly, it held his undivided attention.

  "It is most unattractive to stare like that. I feel like a hamburger Grumps is drooling over."

  "I gave up drooling last week. Besides, if you didn't want me to watch, you'd go into the bathroom."

  "Who has said I did not want you to watch?"

  Just as Lang was drifting off, Gurt asked, "Are you asleep?"

  "Not now."

  "Do you really think some organization, Die Spinne, or something like it, is what is against us?"

  "What we're up against? Possible. No one, not even old men, want to go to jail or be deported, like I said. And you can bet, old or not, there are really wealthy former Nazis, rich enough to hire assassins by the bushel."

  It was not a comforting thought.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Heidelberg, Germany (Hauptstrasse)

  Haus zum Ritter

  The next morning

  Along with the breakfast of rolls, jelly, cheese, and sausage slices, the tray brought to their room included the day's Frankfurt Allegemeine Zeitung. Gurt unfolded it while Lang poured coffee.

  "Mein Gott!" she gasped.

  Lang didn't notice that he had spilled boiling coffee on himself as he gaped at a front page with his picture on it and a caption that translated as "Airport fugitive identified as American lawyer, businessman. ^n

  Gurt's head swiveled around the room as though someone might be watching this very moment. "How did they get the picture?"

  "Shit!" Lang jumped out of bed, using a linen napkin to dab at the hot coffee he had dumped in his lap. He took the paper and stared at the grainy photograph. "Could have been taken by a security camera."

  "Not unless it is custom for you to pose and smile in airports," Gurt observed. ''You also look younger."

  "Don't let jealousy cloud your judgment," Lang said, still staring at the newspaper. "I'd swear that's the service photo from my Agency file."

  Gurt knelt on the bed to look over his shoulder. "Possible. Remember, someone managed to chop into-"

  "Hack into."

  "Hack into the Agency's files and get your picture last year in London."

  "How would the Frankfurt cops even know the Agency had a picture of me?"

  Gurt thought for a moment. "That police detective in Atlanta, the black man who does not like you very much…"

  "Rouse? He loves me like a brother. We just put on a show for your benefit."

  She shook her head. "For one time, be serious. From this picture you could be recognized. Rouse knows you with the Agency worked, no?"

  "He knows from last year that my government service wasn't with the Navy like I told him, yes."

  Gurt nodded. "Since the Frankfurt police have your name and address because you furnished to them on your luggage, it might be normal to contact the Atlanta Police."

  A way of making certain the matter was either permanently misplaced or mishandled, Lang thought. But he said, ''And so?"

  "This man Rouse, he would tell them you were with the Agency…"

  "If he knew it, and I'm not sure he does."

  Unperturbed, Gurt rushed on. "So the Frankfurt police would demand a picture for the paper to identify you." Lang was feeling a little calmer after seeing his face on the front page of a major paper. If you weren't a celebrity or politician, that ranked right up there with finding a 60 Minutes news crew waiting for you at your office in forecasting you were not likely to have a good day.

  "I suppose that would be possible," he admitted, "but you know as well as I do, the Agency won't even confirm someone worked for them, let alone give out their file picture."

  Deflated, Gurt nodded. "You have right, of course. But how?"

  Lang brought the paper to within inches of his face. "Could be a drawing, if the cop has that good a memory. I mean, he only got a second's glimpse before he hit my elbow with his face and I was outta there. Let's hope the picture is too blurry to make a good ID. When we finish with Blucher this morning, maybe you can ask Reavers to do us another favor and change the picture on my passport to include a mustache or something."

  "Me?" Gurt placed her fingers on her chest. "Why do not you ask?"

  "It wasn't my blouse he was trying to look down yesterday."

  An hour later, Gurt and Lang climbed the winding path up to the castle that stood guard over the city. Little more than a ruin since a lightning-induced fire in the early eighteenth century, it had been the ancestral home of the Wittlebach line of German kings and Holy Roman Electors since the thirteenth century. Consequently, an amalgam of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, and German mannerist towers, crenellation, and buttresses combined in an architectural smorgasbord. Below, the red-roofed buildings of the town clustered around
the church like chicks around a hen.

  The pair found a seat under the shade of an oak that might have been as old as the courtyard it adorned. They watched a horde of Japanese tourists, led by an umbrella wielding guide, explore and photograph. A much less organized group of schoolchildren, more interested in the holiday from class than any history lesson, clambered over ruins of walls as they chattered gaily.

  Lang looked at his watch. "Ten-thirty. Blucher's late." Gurt was unconcerned. "He is an old man. It will be an effort to make the climb up here."

  By eleven, not even Blucher's age seemed a plausible excuse. Gurt phoned his home from her BlackBerry, getting only a recording.

  Lang stood, dusting off his pants. ''You stay here, call if he shows." He pulled out his wallet and extracted a slip of paper. "I've got his address here from last night. I'll look for him there."

  The professor lived in a neighborhood of semidetached, tile-roofed, two-story homes with flowers in boxes at each window. The absence of trees told him the subdivision was relatively new. At the number Lang was looking for, an old but shiny VW Beetle was parked in a driveway bordered by a manicured lawn.

  He parked the rental car and rang the bell beside the door. Two more rings produced no result, so Lang rapped his knuckles against the oak and the door swung open.

  Lang peered inside, a queasy feeling stirring in his stomach. Even in this quiet neighborhood, he doubted people left front doors unlocked and unlatched.

  "Herr Doktor Blucher?" Lang called from the doorway. "Is anyone home?"

  Only silence answered him.

  Lang gently pushed the door wide and went in.

  The front door entered directly onto a small living room inhabited by undistinguished furniture and an upright piano. To Lang's right was a fireplace outlined in a mantel of some dark wood. To his left, the room opened into a dining/kitchen area. Everything Lang had seen so far had an impersonal, antiseptic look about it, as though he were seeing a furnished model home.

  The Herr Doktor either spent no time here or was first cousin to the Tidy Bowl Lady.

  A door in the kitchen opened onto a tiny yard where freshly turned rows of dirt indicated the beginning of a vegetable garden, as did a compost pile beside the house. A wooden fence might keep out rabbits but wasn't high enough to give privacy from the second stories of the adjacent houses.

  Lang went back inside and called the professor's name again, with the same result. Afraid of what he was likely to find, Lang started up the stairs.

  The staircase bisected a short hallway. Lang moved silently toward the larger of two rooms, one at each end. The bedroom was as neat as the living room and as unremarkable. A partially open closet door showed an array of outdated but pressed suits. Along the floor, shoes marched in precise ranks.

  The total quiet of the house was unnerving. No floorboards creaked, no utilities hummed. In fact, he hadn't even heard the ticking of a clock. It was as if the building existed in some sort of universe of its own.

  Lang turned and went down the hall, passing the bath, also neat and sparkling clean.

  The other room was used as an office, from what Lang could see from the hallway. One wall was completely lined with books. As he gently pushed the door open, he saw a table used as a desk. A computer screen, papers, and open books covered its surface. It was the closest thing to disorder he had seen so far. He pushed the door wide. Papers covered the floor, blanketing a hooked rug. File folders spilled their guts across shelves, two chairs, and every other available space.

  Lang pushed the door completely open and found the professor.

  Sprawled into a corner behind the door, Blucher stared at the ceiling with lifeless eyes, his spectacles still in his hand. His face was twisted into an expression of abject horror, as though he had been fully aware of what was about to happen.

  Although certain the man was dead, Lang stepped over the outstretched legs, crouched, and put his hand on the head, moving it forward. If there was any question as to survival of the victim, it was answered by the small red hole just at the juncture of skull and spine. The faint odor of cordite and burned hair, as well as the bluish marks around the wound, told Lang the gun's muzzle had been only inches from its target. An execution-style killing with a small caliber that would easily take a silencer.

  The same thing with Don Huff.

  And for the same reason.

  From the coagulation of the small amount of blood and the lack of warmth of the body, Lang guessed Blucher had been dead for some time, perhaps since last night. He wished he could remember the lecture at The Farm. How long does it take for rigor mortis to set in? How long to disappear?

  What did it matter? he told himself. Dead is dead.

  The important thing was whatever the deceased had intended to show him. Was it still here? Lang looked around the devastation in the room. Someone had certainly been looking for something.

  He stood, uncertain where to begin.

  "Herr Doktor Blucher?"

  The call came from downstairs.

  A glance from the window showed a police car parked behind his. No doubt some well-meaning neighbor had noticed the open door and summoned the authorities.

  With his picture in the paper as a fugitive, his presence at a murder scene would cause the police to draw unfortunate inferences, no matter that the forensics would show the man had been dead hours before Lang's arrival. If necessary, he would explain later. Right now, he needed to disappear.

  A quick look confirmed his initial impression: There was only the one staircase, the one that would take him into the living room, where he could hear the investigating cops walking about.

  Suppressing the urgency he felt, he walked slowly to the window away from the street, careful to make no sound. It took a second or two to figure out how the window latch worked before he slid it open. Ten or twelve feet below was the compost pile.

  Lang was thankful he was not on a farm, where such a pile would contain things a great deal more rank than rotting grass clippings and the remains of last year's vegetable plants. Climbing through the screenless window, he held on to the sill with one hand while pulling the window as close to shut as he could. Not perfect, but at least the police's attention would not immediately be called to a gaping open window in the murder room. If he was lucky, they wouldn't notice it at all.

  They would find his prints if they thought to dust a second-story window. It couldn't be helped.

  He let go, and the pile of mounded vegetation broke his short fall. Dusting himself off, he looked up into a face staring openmouthed from a neighboring second floor window. Shrieks of alarm followed him as he dashed for the fence's gate.

  The police were coming but of the front door as Lang rounded the corner. He pointed to his right. "Schnell! Er hat da gelaufen!" Quick! He ran that way!

  Lang was relying on the theory that any command, if shouted with sufficient authority, would be obeyed by Germans. He was only partially correct. One cop dashed off in the direction Lang had indicated. The other blocked Lang from the street and his car, his eyes narrowing. Lang was certain he was comparing the man in front of him to the picture he had seen in the morning paper.

  Reaching for his weapon, the police officer asked in English, "Who are you and what were you doing in the Herr Professor's house?"

  Lang had been made as an American. He apparently growled when he should have spit.

  Forgetting his linguistic shortcomings, Lang had the Glock in his hand and pointed at the German's head before the officer could open the flap of his holster. "Hold it right there. Reach your left hand across your body, take the gun by its butt, and let's see how far you can throw it.".

  Evidently not liking what he saw In the American's eyes, the cop did as he was told.

  "Smart man! Now, the same with your radio."

  The radio followed the gun in an arc over the fence behind Lang.

  Giving quick glances in the direction in which the other officer had-gone, Lang marched hi
s prisoner to the police car, disabling the unit's radio before using the unfortunate man's handcuffs to secure him firmly to the steering wheel. A short search revealed the hood latch, enabling Lang to reach into the engine compartment and remove the distributor cap, which he tossed after the radio and gun.

  Lang then departed in the opposite direction than that in which the other cop had gone.

  On his way back to the hotel, he stopped at an apothecary, designated by a sign bearing a mortar and pestle.

  Inside, he purchased hair dye, cotton balls, an orthopedic corset, and a pair of premade eyeglasses. A few doors down the street, he finished replacing the clothes in his abandoned suitcase with ill-fitting, German-made jeans designed for no cowboy he had ever seen and Italian knit shirts. He was careful in his selection of sandals and the black socks European men insist on wearing with them.

  Anyone looking for Langford Reilly, American, would see a blond man with jowls, slightly obese, wearing normal European leisure clothes. He would no longer resemble the picture on his passport, but that would not be a problem until he departed Europe. The Common Market had essentially abolished borders between its members. On the way back to the car, three police vehicles wailed past, headed in the general direction of Blucher's house. Lang guessed a very embarrassed cop was trying to explain things to his superiors.

  He was in the bathroom, applying the hair coloring, when Gurt got back to the hotel.

  Noting his purchases spread out on the bed, she said, "Things did not go well at the Herr Professor's?"

  Lang was looking at her reflection behind his in the mirror. "Keep your day job; you have no future as a comic."

  Her puzzled expression drew an explanation. "Blucher's dead, killed the same way Don was. The police showed up while I was in the house. I left one of them handcuffed to the steering wheel of his cruiser."

  Gurt did not seem particularly surprised. Getting in trouble with the police was becoming a habit of Lang's.

  ''And the others?"

  "One. He went chasing off somewhere."

  She nodded, slowly digesting the news, before groping into her massive purse and producing a pack of cigarettes.