The Elizabethan Secret (Lang Reilly Series Book 9)

by Gregg Loomis

  Guns discharged, the Spanish crescent wheeled in an effort to close upon the English and board. But Howard and Drake would have none of it. Although the wind was less than favorable, the more maneuverable English craft dodged aside, sending broadside after broadside into the larger enemy vessels without visible effect.

  “Good morrow, Master Dee!”

  Dee turned, uncertain of who had spoken. It took but a second to note the finery, if not foppery, of a young man in his early twenties. The broad brim of his silk hat was pinned to the crown by a jewel encrusted bilament. His breeches were slashed at the knee, showing a violet under color. Fine silk French stockings were stuffed not into boots as the occasion might warrant but into highly polished leather slippers adorned with buckles of what Dee guessed were pure silver as was the scabbard of the slender rapier hanging at his side.

  Dee gave a respectful bob of the head. “My Lord Essex.”

  Robert Duereux, Second Earl of Essex. One of the queen’s court favorites, so much so rumors circulated that their relationship might be amorous despite the thirty-plus year difference between monarch and subject. True or not, the young man often served his queen in special matters. Dee had little doubt that Essex was here to keep an eye on him just as he, Dee, was watching Her Majesty’s commanders.

  The queen’s paranoia was no secret and for good reason. William of Orange, leader of the Protestant Dutch rebels, had been assassinated four years earlier by a man claiming the bounty offered by King Phillip. The one placed on Elizabeth was even larger.

  “What brings thee to Plymouth, my lord?” Dee asked somewhat disingenuously.

  “Curiosity, Master Dee.”

  “As to the outcome of yon battle?”

  Essex shook his head, sending carefully curled locks flying. “Not so as much as the device of thine with which our commanders are equipped. How it doth serve them perplexes me greatly.”

  A dilemma: Although Dee had made no secret of the purpose of his device- he had instructed both Frobisher and Drake on its use- it served only the queen’s enemies to deny it wielded more power than was the case.

  He did the prudent thing and kept silent as Essex continued.

  “Was it the spirits, perhaps Madmi or the angel Hagonel, who inspired your invention of this instrument so dear to our commanders?”

  Unlike most of his court associates who were more interested in a well-turned ankle than substantive knowledge, Essex obviously had read some of Dee’s scholarly scientific works, which, by the standards of the day, included both spiritualism and physics on equal footing. Still, Dee was getting increasingly uncomfortable. Although he was protected by the Queen’s decree, anything related to his communications with angels and spirits exposed him to ridicule by some and suspicion by the church whose principals saw witches--or worse--papists under every bed. The object in question had been created by the pure laws of natural philosophy, not the laws of heaven. For better or worse, the populace in general and the church in particular did not recognize a difference. It was all magic.

  He pointed where the Revenge was clearly recognizable as it emerged from a black cloud of gun smoke. “There! Is that not Drake?”

  By the time Essex had confirmed the ship in question was, in fact, Drake’s, Dee had disappeared by merging into the spectators.

  30.

  Dubrovnik

  The cable car began to move down the rock face. Lang crouched beneath it, waiting for the exact second.

  As the car blotted out the sun above, Lang used his legs as springs to leap. One hand, then two, gripped the single step attached to the cable car more to prevent passengers from tripping in the gap between car and dock than to aid ascent or descent.

  Chinning himself up on the step, he didn’t dare take a look down where a slip would be his last mistake. Holding on with one hand, he stretched toward the door, his fingers inches from the latch he hoped would open it. Closing his eyes with the strain, he willed his grasp to extend another inch or so.

  A fingertip touched it. He pulled himself upward another fraction of an inch with the hand on the step and his fingers closed around the door’s latch. A quick pull and the door swung open. Now that he could use both arms to push upward, he did so, mentally giving thanks to the hours of boredom and pain that were his regular workouts at the gym.

  He rolled onto the floor of the cable car as its passengers compressed to give him room. He got to his feet surrounded by curious faces.

  “OK, so I lost my ticket.”

  Several guides were translating into multiple languages when Lang felt the unmistakable push of a pistol’s muzzle against the small of his back.

  “Just relax, Mr. Reilly,” a voice whispered in his ear. “We mean you no harm. We only want information.”

  The last time Lang had heard that or its equivalent, he had barely escaped with his life. Law abiding people didn’t stick guns in folks’ backs to ask questions.

  A quick glance at the still open door of the cable car quelled any thoughts of immediate escape. Although the car was more than half way down the cliff, it was good hundred feet or so above the ground where jagged limestone protruded from beds of wildflowers like teeth from the mouth of some prehistoric predator.

  Turning his head as far as it would go, Lang still could not see the man behind him with the gun. “What the hell do you people want?” he asked softly.

  His answer was painful jab in the ribs. “No talk now.”

  The car glided to a stop and the occupants surged toward the still open door. The man behind him held Lang’s shirt.

  When the last passenger had exited with a final stare at the lunatic who had risked his life rather than pay for an additional ticket, Lang was shoved forward. He stumbled across the platform, catching his balance just in time to avoid falling down the few steps to the sidewalk where a battered red Yugo Skala was parked.

  There was nothing unusual about the car. It was probably the most common brand seen in Balkan countries despite its US title of Worst Car Ever Built. What was noticeable was that it was parked in a no parking zone. But not alone. Sharing the illicit curb space inches from its rear bumper was a black Audi A3. Lang could see the rear license plate, the generic EU blue stripe down the left side. It would require much closer inspection to ascertain the country of origin and Lang was fairly certain he wouldn’t be given the opportunity.

  The rear door of the Yugo opened as he was propelled toward it. Suddenly there was no longer pressure of a gun’s muzzle at his back.

  Turning, he thought for a moment he was hallucinating: An Asian man danced with a loose limbed motion reminiscent of a Caribbean native doing the Limbo before doing a final spin, going limp and smashing his face against the concrete sidewalk where he seemed to convulse.

  It took Lang’s mind a millisecond to process the two wires that had somehow attached themselves to the man’s jacket. His eyes followed them to a hand holding a very recognizable bulky yellow Taser X26C. The hand was on the arm of a man Lang thought he might recognize were it not for the baseball cap pulled low to shade a face further concealed by oversized sun glasses.

  The smile, though, was not hidden. “Mornin’, Mr. Reilly.”

  “Do I know you?”

  Off came both cap and sun glasses. “Know me? Well, you gave me a lecture on etiquette not so long ago.”

  “Semitz? Office of Naval Intelligence? Where’s your partner?”

  The man on the ground was trying without a lot of success to sit up. He was, however, achieving a growing audience of curious onlookers.

  Semitz bent over him, removing two small electrodes which snapped back into the weapon with a metallic whine. “You mean Rogers? He’s in the Audi there, waiting for you to stop asking questions and get in before either the local cops get here or the other Korean, the one in the Yugo, starts trouble.”

  Lang was thoroughly confused. “Korean?”

  Semitz put a hand between Lang’s shoulder blades, gently guiding him toward the Audi. �
�Make that North Korean.”

  “But what . . .?

  The Audi’s left passenger door swung open.

  “We can handle the who, what, when later, Mr. Reilly. For the moment, I suggest you climb in.”

  31.

  Government Complex #2

  Kim Il-Sung’s Square

  Pyongyang, Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea

  An Hour Later

  Kwak Pum Ji, director of the county’s chief intelligence service, looked out from his sixth story office window. The setting sun painted the glass and steel apartment buildings with a rosy hue more gentle than the stark modern architecture. Most of those apartments were empty now but once North Korea’s military might succeeded in unifying the peninsular bringing South Korean back into the fold, they would be full of grateful South Koreans.

  And the streets would be busy, far more busy than the occasional automobile, almost all of which carried government officials, or the battered blue-and-white trolleys. There were few pedestrians. In a city of three and a quarter million inhabitants, no more than the half a dozen people could be seen on the near-empty sidewalks.

  But then, well over half of those residents lived across the Taedon River, now a pewter gray in the approaching evening. On that side of the river, there were no towering contemporary apartments, no massive marble government monuments. Only multi-story full color banners of the brave Peoples’ Army, Patriotic slogans and, of course The Glorious Leader above the old and crowded housing of the city’s workers.

  He took one last look at the almost uniform turquoise roofs of lower buildings and the Triumphal Arch bearing the dates 1925-1945 marking the Revolution’s triumph over Japanese occupation. Scowling, he turned away from the window to re-read the decoded message he had received just minutes ago from Dubrovnik. He had sent two men there to capture the American and force him to reveal the function of the object that so far had eluded Dr. Sang Ja-reeb and his cohorts.

  Quite foolish, of course. Why bother with a collection of academics when this Lang Reilly person could be made to explain the device in a matter of hours? If the imperialist aggressor Americans had discovered its purpose, there was no reason the patriotic socialist scientists of the Democratic Republic could not also.

  And they would.

  But there was no time.

  No time to risk Reilly falling into the hands of the Russians or whoever else might want the answer to the secret of the device. He did not want to answer to the Glorious Leader should some other power learn the device’s mysterious power before the Democratic Republic.

  And there was only one way to insure that did not happen: Be the first to capture Reilly.

  32.

  Just South of Neum,

  Bosnia-Herzegovina

  Northbound on A1

  Half an Hour Later

  The Croatian Adriatic Highway wound its way along the lower level of jagged limestone cliffs, the spine of a gigantic dragon. On his left, the Adriatic’s blue was constantly interrupted by numberless islands, few of which displayed any sign of habitation. He noted that none had sandy beaches but rather pebbles of varying sizes. Occasionally, the road dipped into verdant valleys where small towns sat astride tidal rivers. People cast nets from small boats.

  The first few minutes of the drive had seen a contentious conversation.

  “Where the hell did you guys come from?” Lang had demanded.

  Rogers, the driver, didn’t look away from the twisting road. “You might show a little gratitude, Reilly. Things didn’t look so good for the home team.”

  “Please accept my most sincere thanks. Now, how about an answer?”

  Semitz turned in the passenger seat. “I’m touched by the sincerity of your gratitude. For your information, The Office kept a loose surveillance on you ever since we learned the North Koreans were interested in you and whatever the hell that thing you bought in London is.”

  “Loose” was an apt description. Despite Agency training and an acute sense of his surroundings, Lang had been totally surprised. His guess was that his movements had been monitored by telescope, or, possibly, electronically. Drones, maybe? Even more astonishing was the identity of his Asian followers as North Korean.

  “North Koreans?”

  “Ever heard of the Reconnaissance General Bureau?”

  Lang searched his memory, reaching back to the years such things had been important. “I think so. North Korean spy organization, right?”

  “Be the first to ring in, phrase that as a question and your score goes up by a hundred dollars,” Semitz said, referring to Jeopardy, the popular TV game show. “Now that you’re picking the right clues, try Kwak Pum Ji.”

  “Sounds like the sound track from an old Donald Duck cartoon.”

  “Not even close,” Semitz said solemnly. “Deduct that hundred dollars.”

  “Should I know the name?”

  “Far as we can tell, he’s the head honcho at the Reconnaissance General Bureau. Our intel is that he’s personally involved in trying to get his hands on that gizmo of yours. In fact, he was in Atlanta a few days back.

  “Well,” Lang said, “that might answer the question of who stole it.”

  “Stole it?” Semitz and Rogers asked in unison, the latter turning his head to look away from the winding road.

  “You guys ever audition that chorus thing? And watch where the hell you’re going, man. It’s long way down.”

  “You’re telling us someone swiped that device, that you no longer have it?” Semitz was incredulous, his tone as skeptical as if Lang had been reporting the emergence of little green men from a UFO.

  “That’s what I’m saying: I had left it with a professor at Georgia Tech to determine just what it did. Someone got it out of his safe. You don’t believe me, check with the Atlanta Police. They should have a report.”

  “Guess that means you don’t know what the thing was supposed to do,” Semitz said.

  “This time it’s your score that goes up a hundred dollars.”

  “Looks like everybody, us, the North Koreans, whoever else is chasing their tails for an object whose function is a mystery,” Rogers observed.

  “OK,” Lang agreed. “Next question: Where are you guys taking me?”

  “Split.”

  Lang called up a mental map of the Balkans. Split was Croatia’s northernmost Adriatic port. “Why there?”

  “Because there’s ferry service to Ancona, Italy. No flight plan. You will simply disappear.”

  “It’s international travel. There will be a passenger manifest,” Lang protested.

  “And your name won’t be on it,” Semitz chuckled.

  “How the hell . . . ?”

  Semitz held out a hand, thumb rubbing index finger, the international symbol of bribery. “Bustarella. After all, it is an operation run by Italians even if owned by a Croatian company.”

  They rode in silence for the next few minutes, each absorbed in his own thoughts.

  As the Audi rounded a curve, Lang saw a pair of booths flanking the road. “I didn’t know this was a toll road.”

  “It’s not,” Semitz said. “It’s the Bosnia Herzegovina ‘neck’. Those are customs and immigration people ahead. Hope you didn’t leave your passport in your hotel.”

  When out of the United States, Lang’s passport rarely was out of his possession.

  “ ‘Neck?’”

  “Part of the political deal when Croatia became independent. Bosnia insisted on access to the Adriatic. So, they have about a ten kilometer strip that divides Croatia.”

  Those booths might be for Bosnian customs service but they bore an ominous resemblance to the toll stations where Sonny, of Godfather fame, was machinegunned. As the Audi slowed, Lang tried to figure why his mind had called up one of cinema’s more dramatic (and gruesome) scenes. As here, the enclosures in the film had been located on a relatively deserted road. Similarly, they had been sited where a deadly cross fire could engulf a victim.

 
Too vivid an imagination. Ridiculous.

  Now that the Audi was close enough, Lang made two observations: first, there were no vehicles close by. The customs officer in each booth either walked to work or someone had to deliver and fetch them. Second, although he could see only the silhouettes of the occupants, the closet one, the man who would check northbound traffic, wore a cap at least two sizes too large. Instead of sitting atop his head, it covered his ears. A little closer scrutiny revealed a uniform jacket with rolled-up cuffs.

  And what was he holding? Lang could only see a part of it but it wasn’t the bureaucrat’s clipboard.

  As the Audi glided to a stop, Semitz reached across from the passenger seat to tender his passport.

  At that instant, Rogers and Lang recognized what the man was holding.

  “Shit!”

  This time it was a chorus of Lang and Rogers as they were suddenly looking down the muzzle of an automatic rifle, probably one of the knock-off AK 47’s that had flooded the international arms market.

  Its provenance was the last of Lang’s worries as he dove for the floor.

  Above his head he heard a sharp stutter of gunfire as he was showered with glass.

  Almost instantly, there was a boom that came from no rifle.

  After about two seconds of silence that seemed to stretch into eternity, there was another “Shit!”

  Cautiously, Lang raised his head. The first thing he saw was a jagged hole in the Plexiglas of the customs booth through which he could see a Rorschach pattern of blood and gray matter splattered against what remained of the rear of the enclosure.