The Pegasus Secret

by Gregg Loomis

  Gurt sat back down and returned her arm to his waist. He detected a whiff of cordite before the wind devoured it, and he realized what had happened.

  As the slope gentled, the road widened until it reached a verge wide enough for Lang to pull off and stop. He pulled out the BMW’s ignition key. Neither he nor Gurt moved or spoke, letting the heat from the cylinder heads seep through their leathers as the cooling machinery ticked.

  Lang finally took off his helmet and turned to watch Gurt unbuckle hers. “I had forgotten you won the Agency’s shooting competition in eighty-seven. Pistol and rifle, if I recall.”

  She smiled demurely as though he had complimented a new dress. “Eighty-eight and eighty-nine also. After that, I quit competing.”

  “What happened to the gun?”

  “Over the hillside along with the Schweinhund in the truck. When the police find the wreck, they are likely to start interrogating anyone in the area. There are bullet holes in the windscreen. I didn’t want to have a weapon on me.”

  “The gun is clean?”

  She was leaning forward, inspecting her makeup in the bike’s mirrors, more like a debutante than someone who had just made a shot James Bond wouldn’t have dared. “It is Agency-issue. My gloves prevented my fingers from printing on it or powder marks on my hands for paraffin to detect. I need only to also dispose of the extra clip in the Krausers.”

  “Should we go back, see what happened to the driver?”

  She turned from the mirror to ruefully regard the cracked fiberglass of the BMW’s rear fender. “And have the authorities show up while we’re poking around? I do not think they would listen to the explanations of an international fugitive.”

  Lang thought about that. “There may be a clue as to who he is, was.”

  “Perhaps if you take off your leathers, put them back in the bags, I will go back alone. If the police come, they will never connect a woman to such a shooting. They are, after all, Italian. They will think it was an attempted high-john.”

  “Hijack.”

  “Him, too. I will see if the driver has any identification. I will also make sure he is unable to tell anyone what happened.”

  He watched her ride off. Kipling, he thought, must have known someone like Gurt when he wrote that “the female of the species is more deadly than the male.”

  5

  The Umbrian Auto Strada

  Thirty minutes later

  Lang waited in one of the road stops that litter the Auto Strada. With its islands of gas pumps, cafeterias and bathrooms reeking of disinfectant, it could just as well have been on the interstates of New York or on Florida’s Sunshine State Parkway. Why does America export only the tacky? Lang had a theory that someday all of Europe would look like Kansas or, worse, California. With that to look forward to, how could anybody be in favor of globalization?

  He was thinking of something else that day, however. The cappuccino in front of him was simply his ticket of admission, the price to be paid for a seat at the bar. The caffeine provided a small high, lost in the tide of adrenaline that was just now beginning to ebb. How had he lived this long without the rush only danger gives? Even if his job at the Agency had never involved a life-or-death situation, a shoot-out, or a high-speed chase, it had been exciting to plan the smuggling of a defector across an armed border. Even guessing an opponent’s next move on the chessboard of Europe had its thrills before the red king and its pawns were swept from the table.

  Now all he had to look forward to was verbal fencing in a courtroom, a competition as highly stylized as any Kabuki performance. At this moment, he missed the game more than he had ever anticipated. The fast-paced developments and the challenge had faded into a memory he suspected was tinted by nostalgia as he had pursued the crushing sameness of law school and practice. At the time, it had been more than an even swap: the certainty he would becoming home every evening in exchange for broken promises and a wife sick with worry when he could only tell her he would be gone for an undetermined period.

  Dawn wasn’t here anymore and Lang was involved in a game with stakes higher than he would have chosen. Even the Reds, those world-threatening hoards of Godless communists, the Agency’s raison d’être, had not been fanatics. At least, not the ones he had known. He had never heard of an opposing agent willing, let alone eager, to die for Marxism like a mujahideen ready to sacrifice all for Allah. They, the name Lang had unconsciously pasted on the unknown group, They were as zealous as any bomb-toting Arab terrorist. His would-be assassin had dashed across the room to jump, to meet whatever maker he contemplated, rather than risk capture. The driver of that truck could not have expected to survive the crash his speed made inevitable on that winding road. He had only hoped to take the two motorcyclists with him to whatever place he thought worth his life on earth.

  For what?

  To Lang, such fervor implied religion, a religious group, more likely a cult. History was replete with dismal examples: the Moslem cult of Assassins, from whom we take the word, who had greeted the Crusaders with nocturnal knives, the Hindu Thuggee, stealthy stranglers of the imperial English, Japanese kamikaze dying for their emperor-god.

  Brother Marcenni’s explanation had given Lang an idea why They might want the picture, might kill to get it. All sorts of wealth could be hidden somewhere, Poussin’s painting the key to its location. But he’d never heard of martyrs for material riches. Men died for causes, for ideas, for vengeance. But for earthly wealth they would never possess?

  But then, the old monk hadn’t said the picture was a map to pirates’ gold, buried treasure or the like, had he? But why else would a painting, one that did not even exactly copy the original, be worth killing for? Something of ideological value?

  Like what, the holy grail?

  There were some facts of which Lang was fairly certain. They wanted the painting and intended to eradicate anyone who might have learned its secret. That secret had to do with the physical location of something of great value to Them. Lang was interested in what that something might be. It could lead him to whoever had killed Janet and Jeff. And tried to kill him. Now that he knew the painting might have a secret, he needed to find out who was guarding the truth the enigma concealed. And why.

  He had a plan.

  There was a hush in the crowded room as Gurt entered and took the vacant seat at the bar beside Lang. A six-foot Valkyrie in motorcycle leathers was apparently not a common sight. Oblivious to the eyes following her every breath, she lit a Marlboro and motioned to the man behind the bar, pointing to Lang’s cup. She also wanted cappuccino.

  Lang would have bet that was the fastest service the barman had provided in weeks.

  He grinned as the hum of conversation resumed. “You make quite an entrance.”

  She took a deep drag from the cigarette, speaking through the haze of her own tobacco smoke. “They’ll get over it.”

  He waited impatiently for her to tell what she had found. She waited until she tasted her coffee.

  “Well?”

  With her free hand, she reached into a pocket and held up a silver chain. From it dangled the same design Lang had seen in Atlanta, four triangles meeting in the center of a circle.

  She let the pendant twirl on the chain. “No papers, no wallet, no identification other than this.”

  “I take it he was . . . ?”

  “As a herring.”

  “Mackerel.”

  “Why should one fish be more dead than another? The jewelry mean anything to you?”

  “Same as the man who broke into my apartment in Atlanta had.”

  She stubbed out her cigarette and put the circle on its chain back into a pocket of the leathers. “Would have been easier to have used a rifle than a truck. Any guess why he tried to run us under instead of taking an easy shot from behind a tree?”

  Lang wasn’t eager to question the wisdom of the decision that had left Gurt and him alive, but he said, “Maybe there was some reason for us to die in a traffic accident.�
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  Gurt shrugged as though it was a matter of no consequence. “Dead is dead. And we aren’t. What’s next?”

  “I need to get out of Italy, go to London.”

  Lang saw an instant of uncertainty. There is no word for “go” in Gurt’s native tongue. Germans fly, walk, drive, etcetera. The means of transportation denotes going. One would not, for example, gehen, walk, to the United States but would flugen, fly.

  “Not easy,” she said. “By now your picture will be in the hands of every police force in Europe.”

  She was right. But Lang said, “Since the Common Market, no one guards borders anymore.” He signaled the barman for two more coffees. “If I could get on a plane at an airport that doesn’t have flights to or from places outside Europe, there would be no customs and immigration. I’d only have to worry about being recognized by an airport cop and a half-decent disguise would solve that problem.”

  “You’d still have to show your passport to get on the flight.”

  “Seems I remember someone who . . .”

  She looked around, apprehensive that the conversation might be overheard. “Yes, yes, the engraver behind the jewelry shop on the Via Garibaldi. If there were two of us, your disguise would be even better. The police aren’t looking for a couple.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t want you at risk.”

  “Risk, he says!” Those eyebrows arched again. “And what do you think we were in back there on the road, an English tea party?”

  “You want to help, see if you know someone in S&T who can fix up a disguise.”

  Science and Technology, the Agency’s Second Directorate, the L. L. Bean of espionage, equipping agents with everything from radio transmitters that fit into the heel of a shoe to umbrellas that shot poison darts.

  She stared hard at her cup. “Either I go with you or you’ll get no help from me. I’m not going to assist in your getting killed.”

  Lang pondered this development. Gurt was no damsel in distress whom he would have to worry about every minute. She had just proved that. Still, exposing her to Them . . .

  “Your engraver,” she added as though aware he was weighing his options. “He is in prison for counterfeiting.”

  “You’re very persuasive,” he said. “You can get S&T’s help, assuming they still do that sort of thing?”

  She drained her cup, making a face at the bitterness of the dregs. “Science and Technology are still with us, yes. They could certainly come up with a disguise your mother wouldn’t recognize. But for who? I mean, they are not going to help an ex-employee evade the police. And there are requisition forms, authorizations . . .”

  The Agency, like any branch of government, ran on a high-octane mixture of paperwork and red tape. As part of the Peace Dividend, employees like Lang had been allowed to retire without replacement. Except in the First Directorate, Administration, the home of the paper shufflers, where bureaucrats were still plentiful as cockroaches. And, like the insect, could survive anything, budget cut or nuclear attack. These were the people who required the endless forms that justified their existence.

  “Not worth the trouble,” Lang conceded. “I still remember how to make myself over so you wouldn’t recognize me.”

  “With your clothes on or off?”

  He ignored her. “I’ll need some cash. Quite a bit, actually, since I can’t use an ATM. Withdrawals from my account can be too easily traced. I’ll need clothes and stuff, too, since mine are at the pensione. It wouldn’t be smart to go back there. That leaves the passport and the usual: driver’s license, credit cards, etcetera. You can get all that?”

  “As long as you understand I’m coming with you.”

  “You drive a real bargain.”

  “It is for your own safety. You cannot, as you say, watch your own ass.”

  “You can just take off?”

  “I have vacation time coming.”

  Lang knew when he was whipped, the value of a strategic retreat. “Okay, let’s go back to your place in Rome and get what we need. Just remember, I warned you, this isn’t some sort of war game.”

  She smiled sweetly, speaking with that mellifluous Southern accent much imitated by those who have never been south of Washington. “Why, mah deah, that is the most gracious invitation Ah have evah received.”

  Lang didn’t even try to guess what Rhett might have replied.

  THE TEMPLARS:

  THE END OF AN ORDER

  An Account by Pietro of Sicily

  Translation from the medieval Latin by Nigel Wolffe, Ph.D.

  2

  Even before the sun had reached its zenith, the heat persuaded Guillaume de Poitiers to shed greave and sabaton,1 remaining armoured only in breastplate, pallette and brassard2 over his hauberk. Over all his military garments was the white robe that floated about him like a cloud.

  He professed no discomfort, relating to us some of the hardships encountered in combating the abominable Turks: the land deserted, waterless and uninhabitable. Therein he and his comrades found not the manna God provided the Israelites in the wilderness but prickly plants with scant moisture or nutriment. More than once, he and his fellows had eaten their warhorses and left mangonel,3 ram, scaling ladders and other implements of battle in the sand for want of a means to transport them.

  His esquire, a young man a few years older than I, had been christened Phillipe. He had, just as I did, no memory of temporal family, having been raised as a child by the Knights of the Temple.

  In the dust raised by Guillaume’s steed, we toiled along on the heavily laden ass. Phillipe entertained me with tales of exotic lands far beyond my mean knowledge. He had been with his master since Cyprus and had shared the privations of the voyage from there. Twice they had been beset upon by pirates from Africa; twice their faith and a wind sent by God had delivered them.

  At the risk of the sins of gluttony and greed, I asked Phillipe again and again about the food and quarters I could expect. He verified what his master had said: Meat was served twice a day, and brothers, whether knights, esquires or others slept on pallets stuffed with straw which was changed weekly. There was a stream nearby so that one might bathe should the weather not be intemperate. Indeed, it may have been at this time I became so engrossed in the luxuries awaiting me that I almost forgot that my purpose was to serve God, not my own desires. It may well be for this that I am to be punished.

  We made our way up Monte San Giuliano, a name that seemed to bode well, being nearly the same as our knight’s in the local dialect.4 At the top was the city of Erice, encased in the walls built by the Norman kings.5 Here we spent the night in an abbey not unlike the one I had departed. So enraptured was I by the promises of things to come that I was disappointed by fare identical to that I had consumed all my life.

  So mean had places dedicated to worship and meditation become to me in my anticipation that I was impatient for Prime to end so we might come one day closer to Burgundy. Once again, our departure was made in the dark.

  The morning was not yet bright enough to illuminate the road down the mountain, a path so tightly convoluted as to make it impossible to see around the next turn. I was glad to be riding the ass whose agility far exceeded that of the lumbering horses which we had to guide carefully lest they misstep and fall into the valley below.

  We had gone a scant dozen furlongs6 beyond the city’s gate when we came around a bend and encountered men in the road. The morning had by then acquired just enough light to show the cudgels7 they carried. Even in the sheltered life I had led, I knew that men upon a public road without beasts or women were more likely to be miscreants than travelers.

  I clasped the rosary around my neck and began to pray for St. Christopher’s intercession, for, although I had nothing worthy of stealing, I had heard men such as these usually left their victims dead or nearly so. Indeed, was that not the lesson of Our Lord’s parable of the Good Samaritan?

  If the poor light and devious road had prevented us from seeing these vile
knaves, it had likely prevented them from seeing that one of our number was a knight with all the armour and weapons of that state.

  As they advanced, Guillaume de Poitiers turned his white charger and trotted back to us so serenely as to deny he was about to enter the arena of battle.8 From the impedimenta upon the back on one of the tethered horses trailing behind Philippe and myself, he drew his great sword and lifted his shield. Holding the blade in one hand and the shield in the other, he turned his horse and spurred it towards those who meant us harm.

  “God’s will be done!” he shouted as he thundered down the narrow path.

  A knight on horseback is more than a match for men on foot armed only with clubs and short knives, as I was about to witness.

  The men in the road apprehended their fate and began to scatter, condemned by their choice of location. There was no means for them to escape other than down the road or over the precipitous edge to near-certain destruction.

  Our knight stood in the stirrups and swung that mighty blade, cleaving one man’s head and shoulders from a body that ran one or two more steps before falling in a sea of his own blood. The next man shared his companion’s fate. Two more jumped into the abyss rather than being skewered like swine above a fire.

  Although I had seen men die of the fever or simply because God had willed it, I had never witnessed souls depart this life with so much blood. Even though these men had meant us evil, I was distressed there was no priest available to administer a final unction. I said a speedy prayer for these robbers in hopes of preventing eternal torture of their souls, a revenge no Christian could desire even for those as foul as these. We are, after all, brothers in that we are children of the Lord of Heaven.

  If Guillaume de Poitiers harbored such thoughts, he did not reveal them. Instead, he stood in the stirrups again, signalling us to move forward with his sword.

  “Are you well, m’lord?” Phillipe asked his master as soon as we had drawn near enough to be heard.