Gregg Loomis - The Sinai Secret

Grumps interrupted his twenty-three-and-a-half-hour- a-day nap to regard his master with one brown eye. His tail beat a slow rhythm on the floor.

"What a joy to come home to such enthusiasm," Lang said, reaching for the leash beside the door. "If you think you can spare the time

…"

Outside Lang made two decisions: First, the chances for anonymity were better if he left the Gulfstream for a commercial flight, even if that meant leaving his weapon behind. Second, he would see if Alicia was willing to make last-minute plans for tonight.

He frowned as he and Grumps headed back for the high-rise condo. The woman was popping up in his mind with increasing frequency. It wasn't the deep love that had grown between him and Dawn, his wife; nor was it the lust at first sight Gurt had inspired. His feelings for Alicia were… well, different, if undefined.

Quit introspecting and start dialing, he told himself, or the woman will already have made dinner arrangements.

Middle Temple Inn

Fleet Street

London

1022 Hours

Two Days Later

Lang was still red-eyed from lack of sleep. Even multiple drinks and the made-up beds into which the first-class seats had been transformed had not cured his aircraft- induced insomnia. Arriving at Gatwick Airport along with the dawn, he had randomly chosen a taxi rather than picking one up at the hack stand. He wanted no replay of Brussels.

The cab dutifully deposited him at the Stafford, a small hotel on a cul-de-sac in St. James's. He was in time for an ample breakfast in a lobby that resembled a parlor Queen Victoria might have visited.

A telephone call, shower, and change of clothes later, he had decided to enjoy the sights of London on foot. Grossing in front of Buckingham Palace, he strode across St. James's Park and Horse Guards to Trafalgar Square, where he paused, ostensibly watching pigeons and traffic swirl around Nelson's Column, an activity that gave him reason to look around like any gawking tourist should anyone be following him.

No one showed him any particular interest.

A short walk down the Strand, past the Savoy, and he stopped again, this time looking at the playbill posted by the theater in front of the hotel. If Lang were being followed, he was unable to detect it.

A block or so farther along was a brief section of old Roman wall that marked where the city of Whitehall ended and the city of London began. It also marked the place where the Strand became Fleet Street, once the center of the city's newspaper and publishing industry, enterprises long ago farmed out to the suburbs, former colonies, or anyplace where labor unions had little sway.

In the twelfth century, the Knights Templar had had a temple here. A short, unmarked path led from the street to what remained of it. Just past that was the ant hill-like Temple Bar, home to most of London's barristers. They located here because of its proximity to the Old Bailey, for centuries past the site of the principal criminal courts.

Lang trudged up a flight of stairs, pausing to flatten himself against the stone wall to make way for a distraught young lady in heels, a black gown, a starched white split dickey, and with a white periwig held atop blond curls by the hand that didn't have the briefcase in it. She gave Lang a baleful stare, muttered something that might have been, "Thanks," and hurriedly clattered on her way down.

Being late for court apparently was just as uncomfortable here as in the United States.

About halfway down a dingy hall, Lang stopped in front of a door bearing a plaque that announced, j. annueliwitz, barrister. There was no bell, so Lang knocked.

"Enter," came a voice from the other side just before the sound of an electric bolt sliding back.

Once he was inside the door swung shut, the only sound being that of the lock returning to its place. J. Annueliwitz, barrister, like Lang, had old habits that died hard.

Lang stepped into what could have been the wake of a tornado: Papers were piled, not stacked, on every flat surface, including the floor. An occasional leather book cover peeked out from the debris. Roughly down the middle of the room a path had been cleared, and in the middle of it stood an older man.

"Lang Reilly," he observed, pushing spectacles back up on his nose. "You must be sorely oppressed to come to me for help."

Lang returned the ensuing bear hug as best he could. "Aren't most of the people who come in here?"

The man stepped back as though to inspect his visitor. A fringe of white hair encircled an otherwise pink scalp. "Oppressed or lost."

He was wearing a starched white shirt unbuttoned at the collar. Part of it hung outside gray trousers held up by bright red suspenders. Turning, he led Lang into a tiny inner office that was, if possible, more littered than the room they had left. Like icebergs, a computer monitor and rack of briar pipes on the desk towered above an arctic sea of paper.

Jacob Annueliwitz surveyed one of two Naugahyde chairs before stooping and gathering up a file folder, spilling its entrails onto the floor. "Sit, sit." He retreated behind the desk. "Sit and tell me your life's story since I saw you last. Is Gurt well?"

The unintentional wounds are the most painful, Lang thought as he gingerly sat. "Don't know. She left me almost a year ago."

"Can't say I blame her, nice girl that she is." He was reaching for a pipe. "And such a bounder you are."

Lang watched the pipe being packed with tobacco from a leather pouch. "I thought Rachel had finally gotten you to quit."

He nodded as he struck a wooden match. "And so she has… at home, at least. That's why I still have this wretched office: to have a place where I can enjoy a pipe or two in relative calm."

Calm was hardly this man's life story. Born to Holocaust survivors in Poland, he and his family emigrated to the new state of Israel after the war. As a young adult Jacob had come to university at Oxford after his obligatory military service. For reasons known only to him, he had preferred the dank English climate to the Mediterranean sun of Palestine and had become a citizen, then studied law. His new citizenship did not deprive him of his Israeli one, and he had been contracted by Israel's intelligence agency, Mossad, to keep an eye on Arab embassies and diplomats.

Both MI5 and the resident CIA had been aware of his activities and, if not approving, did little to interfere. After millennia of shifting attitudes toward them, the Jews felt compelled to spy evenhandedly on friend and foe alike. What had not been so widely known was Jacob's expertise-some said artistry-with explosives, learned during his time in the Israeli army. He was the nuncio of nitrates, the pundit of plastique, a technician of T4.

He and Lang had met while Lang was briefly assigned to the Agency's London office and had become fast friends, a relationship further cemented when each had had a chance to save the other's life.

Lang inhaled deeply before the blue cloud of foul- smelling tobacco smoke reached where he was sitting. "Does Rachel know you still smoke here?"

Jacob took the pipe out of his mouth long enough to survey the bowl. "As you know, the source of all law lies in its enforceability. I think Locke made that observation."

"He probably didn't have a wife who wanted him to quit smoking."

"Quite likely. Now, what, besides my scintillating wit and brilliant powers of observation, brings you here? Or, in the vulgate, what crack have you gotten your arse into now?"

Jacob listened without interruption, poking and prodding his pipe with what looked like a nail. When Lang finished, Jacob made a sucking noise on the pipe before tapping it against an already overflowing ashtray.

"Bloody hell! I'm sorry to hear about Professor Lewis. Seemed a nice chap. For a goy, anyway. Handled a really nasty divorce for him. He wanted to get as far away from his ex as possible. Atlanta was as distant as I could do for him."