Gregg Loomis - The Julian secret

"Thanks. I didn't have time to."

Gurt took a tentative sip from her glass, closed her eyes, and sighed in delight. "That beer makes you happier than sex." Lang chuckled. "I do not have to depend on you for the beer," she retorted. ''And you can enjoy it even when you have a headache." She put the glass down. "I never have those kind of headaches."

True.

Lang became serious. "Think they believed you?"

"About the beer or the sex?"

He shook his head. "About the baggage being stolen."

She shrugged. "Who knows? I do think it might be wise to cross the Platz there and see if we could get a favor from some friends of mine, see what they might be able to do with the local police."

Very little, in Lang's experience. Germans, like any other nationality, did not accept being an American agent as an excuse for creating bedlam on their soil.

"I suppose they could at least find out if they bought your story."

Thirty minutes later, Gurt and Lang crossed Mosel Strasse to an unimposing four-story stone building. Wet with the continuing drizzle, the rock face seemed somehow ominous, like the facade of a prison. Both Gurt and Lang knew that, as they approached, they were appearing on a series of surveillance cameras concealed in the stone work and behind the small, tinted windows made of explosive-proof plastic, reinforced sufficiently to withstand any projectile smaller than an artillery shell. Well out of sight from below, the roof sprouted a forest of antennae. The venetian blinds on the windows were rubber-lined. When drawn, they prevented window-glass vibrations that, scanned by laser or other listening devices, could betray conversations inside.

The door onto the Platz, also reenforced and explosive-proof, opened onto a small foyer. On one wall was listed the American Trade Attache and a number of businesses, none of which ever had a customer visit because the companies did not exist. The foyer opened onto another room that housed a counterlike desk manned by a white-haired man in the uniform of a private security company. Had he looked behind the desk, Lang knew he would have seen a shotgun in a rack, a television monitor, and an alarm button on the floor. The wall behind the desk was mirrored with one-way glass, behind which were men in full combat gear.

The guard gave Gurt and Lang a smile that was perfunctory. only. "Help you, sir, madam?"

From the lack of accent, he was American, not German.

"Good afternoon to you, too, Allie," Gurt said, holding up a laminated card for him to see. "Nice to have you back, Ms. Fuchs." Gurt gave him a smile. "Is Eddie Reavers in?" Lang remembered the name, if not the face. Reavers had, like him, been in the Intel section, although he had begun in Ops. One of the few agents to survive capture by the Russians, he had spent two years in Lubyanka prison, the KGB's own very special hellhole, before being swapped for a Soviet spy. He had returned a hero. Lang was surprised the man had not retired by now.

The guard looked down, checking what Lang knew was a list of anyone expected that day. "Don't see as you have an appointment."

Gurt's smile radiated sexuality. "We-I don't. Just tell him I'm in town with a friend and I'd like a couple of minutes of his time."

The guard gave her an uncertain look before picking up a phone and mumbling into it.

Hanging up, he reached under the desk and produced two laminated visitor's passes. "Clip these on and go on in." He pointed to her suitcase. " 'Cept that bag. You'll have to leave it here."

Gurt was still holding her own Agency identification. She put it into her purse and took the one being proffered.

Gurt approached the desk, clearly well-versed in the drill. Extending both arms, she placed the thumb of each hand on a screen that was part of the top of the desk.

The door to the left of the desk wheezed open, and Gurt and Lang entered a small room. One person could not carry enough explosives to blast through the concrete-and-steel reinforcement of this antechamber. Two men in fatigues without insignia and a large Labrador retriever were waiting for them. As the dog sniffed, one man ran a metal detector over their bodies while the second kept them covered with an M16A2 assault rifle.

The detector squeaked at Lang's belt line, and he grinned sheepishly. "Sorry. Forgot."

He lifted his jacket to allow the man without the rifle to pull the airport policeman's weapon free. For the first time, he noted it was a Glock 9mm.

The man held the gun up, suspicious. ''Anything else slip your mind, like maybe a stick or two of dynamite?"

Gurt gave the guard a glare that could well have singed the paint on the walls. "Perhaps you forget he is with me?"

Both men were instantly apologetic.

"Sorry, Ms. Fuchs."

"Just following orders, Ms. Fuchs."

If Lang remembered correctly, the latter excuse had not played well at Nuremberg. But he said, "It's okay, fellas. You're doing, your job. Just be sure that's here when I come back."

Lang and Gurt stepped onto an elevator that had no buttons for floor selection. It was controlled from somewhere outside. The hallway into which they stepped looked pretty much the same as Lang recalled it: gray commercial-grade carpet that he would expect in a thirty-dollar-a-night hotel room, institutional pale-green walls. The same taste with which U. s. government offices worldwide were decorated. Lang suspected that, buried somewhere in the General Services Administration, there was a grandmotherly lady who furnished such places, a lady who was color-blind, found oatmeal too spicy, and lived at yard sales.

Painted metal doors were closed but could not entirely absorb the hum of machinery. The one at the end of the hall opened.

"Ah hope to hell you've come home," a soft voice drawled.

The accent was southern? No, western. Lang put the name with the face, aided by the voice. Eddie "Lone Star" Reavers. He had been near optional retirement age when Lang had left. He must be in his seventies by now. The man had reveled in his Texas origin, keeping the dialect and mannerisms of West Texas years after he had left it for the last time. Regulations required agents, even those not working in public view, to dress conservatively, drawing as little attention as possible. Reavers sported snakeskin cowboy boots and Stetsons. Lang wondered if he had replaced his standard-issue Sig Sauer with a Colt Peacemaker.

He stood as erect as a much younger man, dark eyes glinting like a hawk's. A square jaw and a nose that had been reset none too gently gave him a pugnacious air, a fighter ready to spring from his corner. Most bald heads only made men look old. Reavers's, shiny and bullet shaped, made him look tougher, an effect like Yul Brynner or Kojak.

Reavers gave Gurt a hug not entirely avuncular. "Welcome back, Sugar. We've sure as hell missed you 'round the old corral."

Lang winced. Geo-ethnic was one thing; dialogue from a B Western movie was another. Had Gurt slept with the guy? It didn't require the Agency's level of intelligence to see he sure wanted to, age notwithstanding.

Gurt endured the embrace a second longer than Lang thought friendship required before slipping by Reavers and into the office.

Lang followed, hand extended. "Lang Reilly. I remember you."

Reavers stepped in front of a desk that definitely was not government issue, motioning Lang to sit. "Shore Ah do. Legend 'round here among us desk cowboys. You're the hombre from Intel went and got Gurt's daddy out from East Berlin, snatched him just like a sidewinder with a rat."

Lang had never thought of himself as a rattlesnake, but he sank down into a leather wing chair, another piece of furniture the government was unlikely to supply. In fact, Reavers's office was the only part of the Agency's station that did not reflect the budget cuts prompted by the fall of the Soviet Empire.