Gregg Loomis - The Sinai Secret

Instead there was a mechanical click, and the face of the dial swung open.

Louis reshelved a book and came over to join Lang in peering into the radio's plastic case. Lang reached his thumb and forefinger in, removing a sheaf of papers rolled with a rubber band. He carefully slid the band off. He was looking at perhaps twenty or so pages in what looked like Hebrew characters.

"From his cousin Joseph in Vienna," Mary commented from the doorway. "He was killed in a motor accident not long ago."

"So he kept papers hidden in a radio?" Lang asked, truly puzzled.

"Benjamin and Joseph were very close. Benjamin went to Vienna for a service for Joseph. Just before he died Joseph mailed those papers to Benjamin, some sort of research he was going to publish. Benjamin checked his cousin's home computer. He never accepted that the accident was that-accidental. The police never found the other vehicle or driver. My husband half believed his cousin was killed for what was on those papers."

Lang put the pages down. "From where did Dr. Yadish's cousin send them?"

She shook her head. "The postmark said Durnstein." She thought a moment. "It may be nothing, but we never knew. His laptop was missing from the wreckage, but his wife said he left with it that morning."

"Obviously your husband thought these were important."

She shrugged. "We did not know. Neither of us read Hebrew, but Benjamin said he thought they were related to some project he was working on, perhaps the one for you."

Interesting but less than helpful, Lang thought. But if

Yadish thought he needed to hide them, perhaps the papers had some answers concerning his death. Lang knew someone as proficient in Hebrew as he and Francis were in Latin. "May I borrow it long enough to make a copy?"

She shrugged, a gesture more of surrender than assent. "It could not hurt."

"One more thing and we'll leave you alone," Lang began.

"No hurry," she said slowly. "I will be alone for a very long time now."

Lang was unsure how to reply, so he said, "I'd also like a look at your husband's laboratory."

She pointed at Louis. "He can take you there. It's only a few blocks away. But you must arrive before the university locks the building for the night."

As soon as he and Lang were back on the street, Louis stopped. "Vorstaat said the woman had been visited only once by the police. That is why you asked her so closely about the second policeman, Hooy, rather than Inspector Van Decker, no?"

"Yes," Lang said, thinking about the faux FBI man, Witherspoon. Mrs. Yadish's description fit him, too. He tried to dismiss the notion as illogical. How many millions of men in their mid-thirties were over six feet with dark hair? But the idea wouldn't go away. It continued to circle his mind like a stray dog seeking a handout.

Five Minutes Later

Louis was saying something.

"Pardon?"

The Belgian pointed to a shop with a copy machine visible through the plate-glass window. "We can make a Xerox there."

Lang turned and stopped. Was it his imagination or had the corner of his eye caught the reflection of someone whirling at exactly the same time to study a handbill posted on a stand? The man was certainly there, and he certainly wasn't the size of Witherspoon. He wore a leather jacket open, with nondescript slacks and black socks under the sandals so loved by Europeans.

Lang handed the rerolled pages to Louis. "Please, if you don't mind, make us two copies of each page."

Louis looked at him questioningly before ducking inside.

Lang studied the surrounding architecture, the boats along the adjacent canal, marijuana plants growing in pots in a coffeehouse window. But mostly he studied the man in the jacket, who seemed as intent on wasting time as did Lang.

Police? Perhaps, but law enforcement officers would be unlikely to waste resources following him when all they had to do was stop him and ask questions. There was a chance, slim as it might be, that Leather Jacket was simply early for an appointment of some kind.

The coincidence that a stranger would suddenly appear idling at exactly the same spot where Lang and Louis were was unbelievable. There were also the coincidences of two bogus cops, and that both the murder victims had been working on the fringes of the same project.

Agency training had included extreme skepticism of mere happenstance. If you refused to accept similarities as flukes, you might be wrong ten percent of the time. Conversely, accepting coincidence at face value was frequently fatal.

Then there was the question of those shots fired in Underground Atlanta. He had been certain they had been a warning. If the shooter had wanted him dead, Lang wouldn't be here right now. Yet the guys who had hijacked him at the Brussels airport weren't out to just warn him.

What was the connection?

Louis emerged from the shop with a bulging paper bag in each hand. He handed one to Lang. "The laboratory is just ahead."

Leather Jacket was still inspecting a window as they left.

"This is the Oost-Indisch Huis," Louis proclaimed, pointing to an attractive seventeenth-century brick-and-concrete building. "It was the offices of the Dutch East India Company. Now it belongs to the university. You have heard of the Dutch East India Company, yes?"

Lang was not so much interested in one of the world's most outrageously successful commercial enterprises as he was in making sure they weren't followed. "Yes."

Louis stopped before an ornate entranceway, waiting for Lang to catch up. Both men entered what looked from the street to be a series of buildings between two tree-lined canals with a block-long bicycle rack in front. As Lang soon discovered, he was in one of many passageways linking a large number of structures.

They passed through a courtyard, an outdoor cafe filled with students. One, a large blonde, followed him with blue eyes. Once again Gurt rose as a specter, this time dressed in motorcycle leathers, the same ones she had worn when she saved his life in Italy, her long blond hair flowing around her face. Two women, Dawn and Gurt: one his wife, one he wished had been. Both gone from his life.

He shook his head as though he could scatter the memories.

"Mr. Reilly?"

Louis was standing outside a door with Yadish's name etched on the glass pane.

Louis fumbled in his pockets and produced a ring of keys. He tried one. The click of a dead bolt signaled that he had found the right one, and he pushed the door open, ushering Lang inside. The room resembled the lab in Atlanta, except it was slightly smaller, and racks of test tubes and beakers flanking Bunsen burners occupied two long counters, instead of electronic equipment. Another difference was that this room looked as though Yadish might return at any moment.

At the end of one counter, in front of a long-legged stool on casters, was a cloth-bound ledger, the sort of thing Lang would have expected to see in any company's accounting department before computers made paper all but obsolete. From where he stood Lang could see that a number of pages had been torn out.

Thumbing through the pages, he asked, "Did Dr. Yadish keep notes here as well as electronically?"

Louis was standing in front of a computer on the other counter. "I do not know."

Lang left the book where it was to look over Louis's shoulder as the computer hummed to life. "The ledger is a journal of sorts. I can't read the language, but the last date's less than a week ago."

Louis left the machine to boot up and viewed the open pages. "A list of purchases-nitrate of mercury, two hundred milligrams, sodium phosphate, and so on. I would suppose he kept an account of the chemicals he used."

Both men returned to the blank blue screen.

Louis tapped a series of keys and frowned. "Nothing."