Gregg Loomis - The Sinai Secret

Lang didn't reply.

Jacob extended a hand across the desk. "These Hebrew writings, you think they may contain clues as to who is after what?"

They're one of those stones I'd hate to leave unturned."

"I suppose you want me to translate them for you."

"You bragged you could read the language."

"No brag, lad. I can and do." He moved his fingers in a give-it-here gesture. "Let's see."

Lang reached into his coat pocket and produced them. "You understand those are only copies. The originals are somewhere in Austria."

Jacob was pushing his glasses up again. "I'll bear that in mind if it becomes bloody relevant." He looked up. "What's your stake in this, anyway?"

"Somebody tried to kill me, remember?"

Jacob was sucking on an empty pipe. "Happens daily to someone in your country, if what I see on the telly is correct."

"This wasn't in the U.S.; it was in Brussels and Amsterdam."

Jacob looked up. "I can see why any number of blokes would be interested in the process of making gold, if that's what your two murdered scientists were really doing. I'm a bit at a loss as to what an ancient manuscript would have to do with it."

"That's what I hope to find out."

Jacob was inspecting the copies carefully, as though they might contain something toxic.

"Quite thick for a truly old manuscript," Jacob muttered, running his free hand across a shiny scalp. "Not something I can do in an hour or two. Have to consult references and the like." He made a vague motion toward the debris of his outer office.

"I don't think I'm in a rush."

Jacob put the papers down and produced a cell phone. "Excellent! I'll ring up Rachel and tell her to put a little more water in dinner's soup."

Lang felt a jolt of near panic.

In the tight intelligence community, Rachel Annueliwitz had been famous as the world's worst cook. Excuses to avoid her dinner parties were as creative as they were varied. Some merited Pulitzer prizes for fiction. The last time Lang had been cornered into eating one of her concoctions had been over two years ago, and he still could not decide whether it had burned most going in or out. Either way, he had been reduced to a state of flatulence that would have rivaled a Greyhound bus for emissions.

"You were kind enough to feed me last time."

"Loaned you the Morris, too," Jacob added, referring to the diminutive automobile he had driven as long as Lang had known him. "So what?"

"Last time I didn't exactly feel free to be seen in public. Seems only fair that Rachel not have the burden of feeding me again. Let me take you both out."

Jacob had put the phone down and was using the naillike thing to scrape the bowl of his pipe, producing a crunching sound. "Fair? What else does the woman have to do? Besides, I'll bet you eat only takeaway, haven't had a good home-cooked meal in a bit."

And not likely to have one tonight, Lang thought. Not only is love blind; it has no taste buds. the prospects were bleak either way. The average London pub or restaurant provided only marginally better fare, usually featuring stringy beef burned beyond recognition and vegetables so thoroughly boiled that they offered little color and less taste. Lang had a theory that this small island had established an empire and dominated the world because the Drakes and Hawkinses, the Wellingtons and Nelsons, the Churchills became morally and mentally tough by enduring English cooking, second only to Aleut Eskimo whale blubber as the worst cuisine in the world. A man who could enjoy steak-and-kidney pie was unlikely to flinch at an enemy broadside. Faced with eating Yorkshire pudding or charging emplaced cannon, who would not choose the guns? The onslaught of the Luftwaffe was nothing compared to a lifetime of blanched peas.

Waterloo was not won on the playing fields of Eton. It was won at the English dinner table.

The quality of British food, or lack thereof, was the reason Chinese and Indian establishments flourished in London. In the last few years one or two French eateries had opened, with great success.

Lang had an inspiration. "Why don't we try Mirabelle's?" Although the food wasn't a whole lot better than the city's dismal average, the checks were astronomical. The theory, Lang guessed, was, Who was going to complain about a dinner that cost more than Great Britain's average weekly salary? "It'll give Rachel a chance to put on some nice clothes."

Jacob grinned, agreeing. "The bird does like to tart up a bit. You'll stop by for a tot or so before dinner?"

Lang tried not to show his relief as he assented.

That evening Lang took the tube's Waterloo Line to St. George's Circle at South Dock, where contemporary high-rises peered at Westminster and the Houses of Parliament across the Thames. Since the addition to the skyline of the London Eye, a huge Ferris wheel along the Embankment, the view was different, perhaps slightly disconcertingly so, from the one Lang had known. The subway, or "tube," had its own amusement system of aspiring musicians, singers, jugglers, and magicians. Lang paused a few minutes at his stop to see an attractive young lady contort her body into what he had thought were anatomically impossible positions before dropping a pound coin into her bowl and heading up the stairs.

Once on the surface, he walked a few blocks to Lambeth Road. Ahead of him were the massive naval guns that marked the Imperial War Museum. He turned left and entered the foyer of a glass-and-steel tower indistinguishable from its neighbors.

The Annueliwitz living quarters were nothing like Jacob's office. Chrome and glass furniture threatened to be a great deal less comfortable than it was. Several pieces of modern sculpture displayed on acrylic stands looked as though they had been machine parts in a former life. On the walls were squares of earth-toned canvas that could have come from a military shelter, each a testament to the gullibility of collectors of modern art.

If monochromatic cloth qualified as art.

Rachel met him with a hug and a kiss that smelled of gin. "Langford! How delightful to see you again!" She pressed a frosted stem glass into his hand. "A very dry martini! See, I remembered!"

Lang was reasonably certain he had had his customary single-malt last time. He had quit martinis ever since Dawn, his wife, had described them as "silver mumblers- have two and you're mumbling."

He accepted the drink as gracefully as possible, looking for a potted plant that might surreptitiously enjoy it more than he. Or at least not show the consequences of imbibing straight alcohol. "Rachel! You have not aged a day. And am I mistaken or have you lost a few pounds?"

Neither was remotely true, but one of the very few things Lang had learned about women was that those two phrases were always appreciated. Actually, losing weight was the last thing Rachel needed to do. He had often thought that if she turned sideways, she would present no shadow. He supposed she maintained that figure to enjoy the miniskirts she favored, one of which she was wearing tonight. With blunt-cut hair the color of midnight and a face Lang was certain had put at least one plastic surgeon's children through college, she could have passed for Jacob's daughter.

"Only pounds she's lost is at sodding Fortum and Mason." Jacob grumbled as he entered from the bedroom.

Lang noticed he had a glass of Scotch.

Rachel whirled away toward the kitchen. She did not walk; step, or move by any mundane means; she danced, tiptoed, pirouetted, or spun. Lang supposed a ballet teacher had also been enriched by knowing her.

"Oh, I have some very special hors d'oeuvres I made just for you," she called over a shoulder.

A potted plant was now a necessity.

Seeing none, Lang stepped over to the sliding glass doors, opened them, and stepped onto the narrow ledge that Jacob generously referred to as a balcony. The last time Lang had been out here he had been hanging underneath by his fingertips.