Gregg Loomis - The Julian secret

Maybe she had not forgotten as much of World War II as he had thought.

He played it straight. "That won't be necessary. While you're calling favors due, I'm going to see if the hotel has a computer I can use, check out that CD."

Despite its fourteenth-century Moorish appearance, the hotel had a business center equal to any similar facility in the United States. Lang showed his room key to the attractive young woman at the entrance, and she led him to a cubicle complete with computer and printer.

"Will that be all?" she asked in almost accentless English.

"Yes, er, no." Lang was looking at the keyboard. "I want to print out some photographs on this disk, but I don't read Spanish."

She gave him a very professional smile, one he was sure she lavished on every dullard fortunate enough to be a guest here. "No problem. May I have the disk?"

She inserted it into the computer, pressed a couple of buttons, and stepped back. "That should work. If you have a problem, let me know."

Lang sat in front of the screen as the printer hummed. Why was it technology was less intimidating the younger you were?

The black-and-white pictures were not quite as clear as he might have hoped, either because they were not exactly focused or because of something in the process of transferring ordinary film images to a digital format. The computer had caught the sepia tone of old photographs. Most were different views of the classical facade of the same building, a structure Lang recognized as St. Peter's in Rome. One depicted a man in what might have been a black uniform, with what could have been part of the basilica as background. Lang studied the face. Perhaps mid-thirties, piercing eyes, and, most distinguishing, a scar across the right cheek. Lang looked closer. What was the insignia on the collar of his tunic? Too blurred to be certain. The other pictures seemed to have been taken at night or inside, and depicted the same man, this time in mufti, standing in front of a rock face on which barely distinguishable letters were carved.

Lang stared at the man for a long time. His face was… familiar? Impossible. Lang was certain he had never seen the guy before, yet there was something recognizable about him. Perhaps a movie star or other celebrity of years past whose picture Lang had seen?

Hadn't the inspector said the pictures were sixty or so years old? How did he know? The next photo answered the question. In this one, the man's uniform was clearly visible and distinguishable from civilian clothes. He stood in front of the building. Lang looked closer. His attire was either black or very dark, perhaps navy. On the high collar was some sort of… Lang held the paper inches from his face and recognized the stylized lightning bolts of the SS, the elite of the Nazi military.

That made sense, Lang supposed, since Don had been writing about some long-dead Nazi. But why would photographs that old be worth killing for, particularly pictures that looked like those some soldier might have had made to send home like any other tourist?

He turned off the computer and headed back to the room.

Gurt was watching what appeared to be a Spanish soap on the room's TV. A man with sideburns that would have rivaled Elvis's was shouting something at a sobbing woman. It was the first time he had seen her watch television.

"I didn't know you spoke Spanish," Lang said. "I don't, but the story on these programs is much the same everywhere." Apparently, she was more of a television watcher than she admitted. Lang put the envelope with the disk in it on the room's desk. "Any luck getting a line on our friend?"

Gurt aimed the remote at the TV. It clicked off. "Luck? No. I intended to get the information. The man is a little-time criminal, has attended prison for purse snatching, picking pockets, that sort of thing. He has been out less than a month."

"And the cell phone?"

"Someone else's, stolen."

Something Spain and the United States had in common: the effectiveness of the corrective function of their respective penal systems.

Lang sat down on the bed. "Penny-ante crooks can't afford automobiles in Europe. Unless those two stole the one they got out of, somebody hired them to follow us. Or worse."

"Or they wanted to scare us away."

Lang hadn't considered that possibility. "From what?"

Gurt glanced at her purse, no doubt wondering how much grief she'd get if she lit another cigarette. "From whatever they think we are doing. Or whatever they think we might find among your friend's papers."

They looked at each other without speaking for a full minute before Gurt broke the silence. "That knife. He could have intended to kill you."

"And the one that followed you?"

"Ion the lighted streets remained. He had no chance to harm me before I walked the two or three blocks back here."

Another pause. Gurt decided to risk it. She pulled her cigarettes out of the purse. "Lang, what are we doing?"

"I'm not sure I understand the question. What you are doing is setting yourself up for cancer, emphysema, and tobacco-stained teeth."

Like her favorite fictional character, Scarlett O'Hara, Gurt apparently decided she would worry about that tomorrow. "I mean, why are we getting involved in this? Huff may have been a friend, but he was not close. I never heard you mention him before the other day. Besides, what cap. we do the police cannot?"

As usual, she had looked right in and seen his soul. Or at least part of it. The truth that Lang really didn't want to admit to himself or Gurt was that he had gotten bored. You could defend only so many wealthy embezzlers, stock manipulators, and flimflam artists before they all became the same. Likewise, the ever-growing list of mendicants seeking funds from the foundation were assuming a tedious similarity.

Last year, he had set out to find the killers of his sister and nephew. It had very nearly cost him his life as well. But he had succeeded where the local authorities had failed, and the danger inherent in the enterprise had been exhilarating.

Settling a score for a man who had saved Lang's life was only part of the reason.

And Gurt knew it.

Sometimes he thought he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her only because he dared not have someone who knew him that well on the loose.

"I care more than the police, and I owe it to Don."

Gurt shrugged, not buying it but not willing to argue, either. "As you say. Now what?"

Lang looked at his watch. "We still have a couple of hours before dinnertime-Spanish dinnertime, anyway. I'd like to go back to Don's house, where I can spread out these papers the inspector gave back to us. r d also like to take another look at those index cards."

It took less than five minutes to walk to the house on

Calle Colon. As far as either could tell, no one followed.

"Who is it?" Jessica's voice came through the speaker at the street entrance. "So, what did you find out at the police station?" she asked as soon as the gates swung open.

"That they don't know zip," Lang said.

"And our help they don't want," Gurt added.

The iron gates closed behind them.

"The inspector, a guy named Mendezo, gave us the CD and the papers he took." He handed her the box with the papers. "I'd like to keep the disk." She led the way into the house. "Sure. Did you have a chance to download the pictures?" By unspoken consent, they sat in the same chairs they had that morning.

Lang produced another envelope, this one bulging. "I printed them out. Take a look and see if they mean anything to you."

After Jessica had studied each one, she put them back in the envelope. "Just an old building with some guy in a uniform standing in front. I have no idea what Dad was going to do with them."

Disappointed but not surprised, Lang stood. "In your dad's office or work area, there was a little metal box of index cards. Could we go take another look?"