by Gregg Loomis
Gurt and Lang had joined several couples for a ski weekend in Garmish-Partenkirchen. In his mind, Gurt would always be associated with the Post Hotel, Bavarian food, and the slopes of the Zugspitze. The resulting affair had been hot enough to burn out a few months later when he met Dawn on a brief trip back to the States.
To Lang’s surprise and chagrin, Gurt had seemed more relieved than jilted. They had shared a friendship ever since, though, a relationship renewed as scheduling and posting allowed: an occasional drink in Frankfurt, a dinner in Lisbon until his resignation. By that time she was due a promotion to management, a result of the Agency’s begrudging and Congressionally mandated sexual egalitarianism more than her acknowledged abilities. Her talents were not limited to language but ranged from cryptography on the computer to marksmanship on the firing range.
On mature reflection, perhaps it was just as well Gurt did not take the end of their romance too seriously.
When Saint Peter’s was only a couple of blocks away, Michelangelo’s dome filling the northern horizon, Lang looked for a pay phone. He was thankful he wasn’t in one of those European countries where public phones are hoarded like treasures, available only in branches of the national postal system. In Rome, pay phones were plentiful if functioning ones were not. He had chosen this part of the city from which to phone. A trace of any call made from here would lead to one of the most heavily visited places in the world. Though not impossible, it would be difficult to pinpoint the specific location of any one phone quickly enough to catch someone involved in a conversation of only a couple of minutes.
If anyone were tracing the call.
He dialed the embassy number and listened to the creaks, groans and buzzing of the system.
When a voice answered in Italian, Lang asked for Ms. Fuchs in the trade section.
The voice smoothly transitioned to English. “May I tell her who is calling?”
“Tell her Lang Reilly’s in town and would like to buy her dinner.”
“Lang!” Gurt shouted moments later. If she wasn’t happy to hear from him, she had added acting to her list of achievements. “What carries you to Rome?”
Gurt still had not totally mastered the English idiom.
“What brought me here was seeing you again.”
She gave a giggle almost girlish in tone. “Still the Shiest . . . , er, thrower of bullshit, Lang.” He could imagine her cocking an eyebrow. “And have you brought your wife with you to see me?”
No way to explain without staying on the line a lot longer than he intended. “Not married anymore. You free for dinner?”
“For you, if not free, at least inexpensive.”
She had mastered lines that died with vaudeville.
They had no common history in Rome, no place he could designate by reference in case someone was monitoring the perpetual tap on all Agency lines. Lang’s choices were a secluded place where he could be sure neither had been followed or a very crowded spot where they would be more difficult to spot. The more potential witnesses would also mean more safety.
Crowds won.
“The Piazza Navona, you know it?”
“Of course. It is one of the most famous . . .”
“Fountain of the Three Rivers. Say about eighteen hundred hours?”
“Isn’t that a bit early for dinner?”
Most Italians don’t even think about the evening meal until nine o’clock, 2100 on the twenty-four-hour clock common in Europe. They do, however, begin to consume appertifs long before.
“Want to see you in the sunlight, Gurt. You always looked best in the light.”
He hung up before she could reply.
Like most lawyers, Lang was connected to the womb of his office by the umbilical cord of the telephone. He could have no more failed to call in than a fetus could fail to take sustenance. He had not had the time to purchase an international calling card, so the call was going to require considerable patience in dealing with an overseas operator whose English might be marginal.
Sara answered on the second ring. “Mr. Reilly’s office.”
Lang glanced at his watch and subtracted five hours. It was shortly after nine A.M. in Atlanta.
“Me, Sara. Anything I need to know, any problems?”
“Lang?” Her voice was brittle with tension. “Mr. Chen called.”
Chen? Lang didn’t have any client . . . Wait. He had had a client, Lo Chen, several years ago. The man had been accused of involvement with the growing number of Asian mobs in the Atlanta area. Not believing any authority would be stupid enough not to tap the line of the lawyer representing a man accused of a crime, Chen had insisted Lang use pay phones to call him at a rotating list of phone booths. Complying with his client’s wishes, Lang used one of the phones in the lobby of the building.
What did Sara mean?
“Do you remember Mr. Chen’s number?” Sara sounded as though she was about to cry.
“I’m not sure. . . .”
Sara said something, words directed away from the phone.
A man’s voice asked, “Mr. Reilly?”
“Who the hell are you?” Lang demanded, angry that someone would interrupt a call to his own office.
There was a mirthless chuckle. “Surprised you didn’t recognize me, Mr. Reilly.”
Lang felt his lunch sink. There had to be something wrong, terribly wrong. “Morse?”
“The same, Mr. Reilly. Now, where be you?”
“What the hell are you doing in my office?”
“Trying to find you, Mr. Reilly.”
“You got more questions, I’ll answer ’em when I get home. Or on your dime.”
“And just when might you be coming home?”
There was something in the tone, a come-here-little-fish-all-I-want-to-do-is-gut-you quality to the question that activated Lang’s paranoia like a tripped burglar alarm.
“You’re asking so you can meet my plane with a brass band, right?”
There was a pause, one of those moments the writers of bodice-rippers described as pregnant. Lang would have called this one plain ominous.
Then Sara apparently took the phone back. “They’re here to arrest you, Lang!”
“Arrest? Lemme talk to Morse.”
When the detective was back on the line, Lang’s concern was beginning to outweigh anger. “What is this B.S.? You sure as hell can’t begin to prove I’ve obstructed your investigation.”
In fact, with the Fulton County prosecutor’s conviction rate, it was doubtful he could convince a jury of Hannibal Lecter’s violation of the Pure Food and Drug Act.
There was another dry chuckle, the sound of wind through dead leaves. “Proovin’ not be my job, Mr. Reilly. Arrestin’ is. Shouldn’t come as any big surprise I got a murder warrant here with your name on it. Where were you ’round noon yesterday?”
On my way to Dallas with a false passport as ID, Lang thought sourly. There would be no record that Lang Reilly had been on that plane.
“Murder?” Lang asked. “Of who, er, whom?”
Even stress doesn’t excuse poor grammar.
“Richard Halvorson.”
“Who is he?”
“Was. He was the doorman at that fancy highrise of yours.”
Lang had never asked Richard’s last name. “That’s absurd! Why would I kill the doorman?”
“Not for me to say. Mebbe he didn’t get your car fast enough.”
Just what the world needed: another Lennie Briscoe.
“And I didn’t hear you say where you were yesterday,” Morse added.
“I barely knew him,” Lang protested.
“Musta known him fairly well: left your dog with him. And he was shot with a large-caliber automatic just like the Browning be in your bedside table.”
Lang fought the urge to simply drop the phone and run. The more he knew, the better he could refute what appeared to be absurd charges. “If you’ve been into my bedside table, I assume you had a warrant.”
“Uh-hu
h. Nice and legal. Got it when your fingerprints showed up on the shell casings. Gun’s been fired recently but ballistics report won’t be back till tomorrow. I’m bettin’ be your gun killed him.” Morse was enjoying this. “You got somethin’ to say, you come back here an’ say it. FBI gets involved, you become a fugitive. You don’t want them on your trail.”
Me and Richard Kimble, Lang thought.
Lang knew he should sever the connection as quickly as possible but he couldn’t, not just yet. “The dog I left with Richard . . . ?”
Apparently Sara could hear at least part of the conversation. Her voice was clear in the background. “I’ve got him, Lang, don’t you . . .”
Lang hung up with at least one problem solved and walked away in a daze. They had done it, of course, killed Richard with his Browning—the one Lang had loaded, leaving his prints on the shells—and replacing it where it was sure to be found. Clever. Now every cop connected to the Internet anywhere in the world would be looking for him. Interpol, the Italian Policia, everyone would be doing their work for them.
How long had Lang been on the phone? Long enough for a trace? Unlike the old movies, computers could race through area switchboards with the speed of light. But an international call involved satellites, no wires connected to specific telephones. The best the computer could do was give general coordinates as to location. The bad news was that a trace would reveal Lang wasn’t in the U.S. of A., something Morse would have had to wait to find out after getting the record of the Miami-Rome flight in the check of credit cards that was standard procedure in any fugitive hunt. Without a current bogus passport, Lang had had to use his real name and plastic for that leg. In today’s terror- conscious environment, paying cash for an international flight would have subjected him to scrutiny he had not wanted.
2
Atlanta
Twenty minutes later
Detective Franklin Morse stared at the fax again, although he had already studied every detail of both pages. The quality was poor, but good enough to recognize a copy of an airline ticket from Miami to Rome. The name of the passenger was clear enough: Langford Reilly. So was the transmitted photograph, grainy and streaked.
Reilly looked like he was walking past some sort of official on the other side of a booth, maybe customs or immigration in an airport. That would make sense if Reilly had fled to Rome, if that was where Reilly was when the detective had spoken to him not half an hour before.
What didn’t make sense were the two pieces of paper themselves. They had arrived on the machine used exclusively by the detectives in the squad room in Atlanta’s City Hall on East Ponce de Leon. Not a state secret but not exactly a published number, either. Verification of the numbers at the top of the pages led to a public facsimile machine in Rome.
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.
3
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.”
